


Death and the Maiden

by Zagzagael



Category: Death and the Maiden - Fandom, Rico Genest, zombieboy
Genre: Death, F/M, Photography, Tattoos, death & the maiden, rick genest, rico genest - Freeform, zombie boy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 31,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15565251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: For my Muse, Rico Genest. Always. RIP.A contemporary Death & the Maiden tale.A 20-something photographer meets her tattooed muse.Does she fall in love with him or with the personified death he represents?





	1. Chapter 1

 

  
  


_It is said that if you dream of someone,_  
 _they are thinking of you._  
 _Or that they miss you._  
 _Or that they have a message for you._  
 _When I sleep, I dream of you._ ~ Death

 

His hand had finally gone blissfully numb. The wrist had been bad. As though a detailed search was being made of the bracelet of bone with the tip of an exacting scalpel. He looked down at his fingers splayed wide, his palm sweating, gripping the arm support of the modified barber’s chair. He could not keep the grin from spreading across his face, the bones of his hand were outlined into his flesh. The black and grey shading now being whisked into the carpel outlines and he could tell it was going to be glorious. The skin of his hand was an angry red.

Now that he could see the work was good, Jakob leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes, and let the stinging push and pull of the shading needles lull him into a place of grey pain. He liked it there. It was his recognizable valley to tread.

The soft back of his hand was beginning to swell. The tingling numbness would abate soon. Adrenaline tasted bitter on his tongue but it was the chemical taste of drug and he savored it. He made an exquisitely painful fist when Mark took a break, the tattoo artist needing to flex his own carpal glove to relieve the inherent job risk of repetitive injury.

Two hours later and his right hand, fingers, and thumb were finished. Designed to match the left but it would be several years of the ink aging into the flesh before the match was perfect.


	2. Chapter 2

The tattoo studio was housed in a small, post-WWII cottage on a main thoroughfare in midtown. The building was set back from the street, fronted by a ragged rectangle of grass, beneath two towering, ill Dutch Elms, between a similarly established costume shop and a modern glass and chrome copy shop. It offered dangerous street parking only unless one knew about the small alley lot. A cracked sidewalk ran the length of the block but saw very little foot traffic. The studio had black-out film on all the glass, a neon sign in one of the larger windows that simply read “Tattoos” and hanging on the inside of the door a plastic red and white sign currently turned to read “Open”. A narrow porch sagged but a sprung couch and several folding chairs beckoned conversationally.

It was the end of the first decade of the 21st Century in a sprawling town in Northern California and the studio was doing steady business in an unsteady economy.

Each of the three artists making time there had his own studio space with the front room serving as a comfortable reception area. The walls were papered with colorful, laminated flash helping to keep the nervous eye busy while the sound of buzzing irons was muffled behind walls and partially closed doors. The tattoo business was efficiently run from a mahogany bar that had been appropriated from a demolished building.

Evangeline was beginning to know the business as intimately as she knew its owner. Both Mark and his tattoo parlor shared a stark contrast in appearance and actualities. The ragged look of the outside of the studio belied the meticulously clean and hygienic inside; the bland and dull exterior opposed the vibrant and creative interior. Mark’s stunning and complex skin suit was covering bones longing for a pedestrian domesticity.

The owner of Alchemical Rose Tattoos was routinely outfitted in a long-sleeved black work shirt severely buttoned up, the colorful swallows on each side of his neck straining to fly above the sharp edges of his collar, tattooed knuckles that declared his personal ethic to the world. WORK HARD. Closely cropped hair hinted at steel around his temples, and long thin sideburns accentuated his handsome face. He had two forms of constant headgear, a flat-brimmed baseball cap he had just switched to with the onset of warmer weather, and the black knit watchman’s cap he had worn pulled low over his ears throughout the winter.

Evangeline had fallen in love with the parlor, the artistry, the bravery of the craft, before succumbing to the lure of Mark’s gentle seduction. They had been seeing one another for six months, their relationship faltering out of the damp dimness of autumn and into the cold and wet darkness of winter. She wondered how they could weather the spring and summer.

Sitting in the car, watching the world outside the windows, debating the use of an umbrella or a mad dash to the front door, she cracked her window enough to perfume the interior of her aged Volvo with midtown’s unique aroma of old tarmac, diesel fuel exhaust, wood rot, and the bitter smell of the dying elms.

She could clearly feel the first stirrings of growth and revival as the earth shifted and tilted beneath her and the seasons began their return towards the light. It was the first day of spring but the equinox was marked with morning rain and afternoon rain and evening rain. March was leaving, the proverbial wet lamb.

She opened the car door and bolted.

She had the test prints in a large, awkward portfolio tucked under her arm. On the porch, she pressed her shoulder against the studio’s front door, trying to work it with her elbow, intent on keeping the photographs from getting bent. Without warning the door was pulled inwards and she stumbled forward, into someone's chest.

A soft, guttural noise emanated from him and she straightened. He set his hands firmly on the balls of her shoulders, pushing her away from his body. She sensed a restraint, a gesture that was both helpful and repelling. She looked up and into his face.

She could not keep herself from gasping aloud. His gaze narrowed, affronted and dangerous. Then he lunged at her, popped his eyes, sneering and pushing past. His shoulder banged hard against the glass of the door and he was gone.

The door had been ground to an opened stop. She turned and watched him lope down the walkway and onto the sidewalk before he disappeared from view, into the misty morning. His combat boots had left widening rings on the rain-sloshed cement. “Who was that?” she said aloud to the room, standing astonished.

“No one you want to know,” Mark answered, walking past her and closing the door.

“Really?” she said, responding to his tone more than his response. Her lips closed in a tight line.

He shrugged. “A guy working on a full body tattoo.”

“That was seriously overwhelming.” She could still feel the affect that the man’s heavily tattooed face had left her with, a reeling shock. “I honestly don’t know what to say. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a face tattoo like that.”

“You haven’t spent enough time in a gang,” Frank said from behind the counter.

“Oh, haha,” she replied, turning to the other tattooist with an exaggerated eye roll. “That was not gang ink. I’m blown away. Literally.” She turned back to the door with its black-out film, peering through it, as though the skeleton would return if she summoned him. She looked at Mark, blinking. “I wish I had gotten a better look. You’re doing the work for him?”

“Yep. Just finished one of his hands.” He shook his head. “On a long-gone payment plan. Working on the cheap now.”

“And the work?”

“Ain’t cheap. You didn’t get a good look. It’s insane.”

Frank stood from behind the counter, leaning on both hands towards them. “It’s insanely fucking fantastic.”

“Alright then. I want to get a good look, take some pictures. We can add him to the shop’s collection.”

Mark had walked back to the counter but stopped short at this. “Why? What for? We don’t want to use him to represent the studio.”

Frank interrupted. “Hell no. It’ll scare off the co-eds. We’re trying to improve our image. Why do you think we hired you?”

She smirked playfully at him. “You didn’t actually hire me, though, did you? I begged, you agreed, and we’ve all been locked in a sick kind of symbiotic relationship since.”

“Don’t talk about your and Mark’s thing like that.” Frank was laughing, looking from Evangeline to his boss. She wondered if he could see the uncomfortable distance that had begun to separate them. “Jakob would give the shop a different feel. I don’t know-”

Mark nodded in agreement and leaned over the counter, reaching for his coffee mug. He sipped it watching her over the rim. “He didn’t slow down just now because he doesn’t like to be looked at. I can’t imagine he wants to be photographed.”

She realized something was bothering him and concluded it was probably her. A viral tension had infected their relationship. Both were miserably feverish with it. “Why would someone who doesn’t want to be looked at have his face tattooed like that? It’s not that surprising that he’s difficult, is it?” She pulled the portfolio out from beneath her arm and reached over her shoulder to free her long braid of blonde hair from inside the back of her leather jacket. She sharpened her voice. “But of course, you should consider them college girls and their tramp stamps. Your bread and butter?”

“Definitely my butter,” Frank said, leering.

Evangeline watched Frank sit back down, picking up the discarded crossword, pulling a pen out from behind his ear. She looked over to Mark, his gaze was even harder now and she felt a sinking discouragement. She could see that her flippancy was irritating him, his aggravation with her irritating them both.

He spoke and his voice was dismissive. “The fact that he doesn’t want to be looked at, yeah, that’s weird, huh? But regardless, you’re not going to make any money off him. He’s got no money. I think he squats in some shooting gallery over on the west side.” He finished his coffee and set the mug down with a clatter on the counter top. “You could probably make art with the guy if you’re into that kind of scene.”

“What kind of scene is that exactly? Is this a jealousy thing then?” She lowered her voice and laughed flirtatiously, trying to win him back. He refused the advance. She had come to recognize this trait, once determined to be hard there was little chance of softening him.

“Believe me, Evangeline, you’ll know it when I’m jealous. But you’re avoiding the point. He’s not going to pay you to take his picture. And I don’t think we want to use images of him here. We actually haven’t seen him for, what, Frank? Almost a year now. I think he’s a drug addict or a drunk.”

 “Or both,” Frank agreed.

Her gaze narrowed, sliding from Frank to Mark. “On my dime, then.”

Frank laughed loud. “Time is money, baby. Oh, that reminds me - Jack wants you to take his picture with his new lady.”

“Alright, alright.” She shrugged, defeated. “Where is Jack? And what’s this about a new girlfriend?” Before Frank could answer she straightened her shoulders and turned to Mark. “And I do want to photograph that guy. It’s not about money.”

“I thought you said money legitimizes you. You’re going to end up paying him. Like a tourist.”

“Like a tourist? That doesn’t even make sense.” She curled her fingers into her palm and took a deep breath. “Work this out for me, Mark. Really.”

He looked down and away, his expression noncommittal. “Maybe next time he comes in I’ll mention it.”

Frank was nodding. “We’ve all worked on him. Mark’s shit is sweet, but Jack has done roses and thorns that are just as outrageous. He looks good.”

“You say that so reluctantly.”

“He can be a jerk. And now we think he must be a bum. All that work wasted.”

“Wasted how exactly? You thought he’d make you famous?”

“Not us, but we thought he’d do more with the ink. Have you seen him before?”

She considered this. The face of the inked skull etched clearly in her mind, the stark black-and-grey shading, the lines, and the tattooed grin that split his face from ear to ear. A young man’s face tattooed with the framework of the bones beneath, the living death’s head, and she had never seen him around town, or on the news, in the local rags, or even at shows.

Mark interrupted her contemplation. “We worked on that guy off and on for several years. This was before we knew you or yeah, you would have been involved. We were excited about it at the time,” he paused, “but once we committed to it, it got really overwhelming. It’s a boatload of ink and, well, it has to affect his life, you know? It just never became what I thought it would become. That’s all. If he keeps coming back, says he wants to finish the work, I’ll feel it out and see what I think. But no, we don’t want him as shop mascot or anything. But,” he exhaled, “he might be able to satisfy your strange urges.”

“She’s got strange urges? Dude, you are so holding out on me.” Frank looked between the two of them.

“I do not have strange urges, Frank.”

Mark shrugged. “You’re looking for something to photograph that no one’s ever seen before.”

She looked away from Mark’s direct gaze. “That isn’t possible. Really. But I would like to photograph something in a way that no one’s ever seen before.”

“Apparently, your modeling days are numbered. She’s looking for a new muse,” Frank told Mark, his voice good-natured, but Evangeline recognized the cloud of emotions that darkened Mark’s handsome face.

“I’m not a model or a muse and I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Mark answered with finality.

The conversation was veering into uncomfortably familiar territory. There was truth in Frank’s casual assessment. She watched Mark’s clouded expression, his brow lowered and she wondered how physical intimacy could be so separate an experience from emotional knowledge. She knew she had limited the range he could travel with her. Relationships had always been about caging herself and feeling the frantic throbbing behind her ribs, she knew that she wanted to set her heart free. She scowled.

He stepped toward her, reaching out for the portfolio. “Let’s see what you’ve been working on.”


	3. Chapter 3

She had lured him into her studio. On the other side of the kitchen wall loomed the work space of her live/work loft. The floor to ceiling glass panes, the timeworn brick and mortar, the thick planked flooring all bringing to static life her interior staging. Although the bulk of her photographic work was comprised of client portraits, she had also created art in that space and it held sacredness for her.

She knew that Mark believed her desire to work with the tattoo studio as a photographer was a professional courtesy. He had never once commented on her unmarked skin and she had rarely asked him to pose for her reverential lens. She had kept her growing fascination with the inked bodies narrowly focused on his tattooed clients, shooting for advertising media. His own heavily tattooed body teased her with creative possibilities but she had yet to open her studio doors to exploring the human artwork artistically. The siren call of inked flesh had begun to pull her under and she had to do something to force herself back to the surface, regain control.

He was standing uncomfortably in the middle of the floor, surrounded by light stands and the rolling backdrop hanger. He looked miserable and on edge and this angered her speechless. She took a deep breath. “This is supposed to be fun.”

“Fun.”

“Mark, c’mon. Why be like that?”

He shrugged and her heart could see that he was trying but her head refused to give ground and she lowered the camera. “Fine, you don’t want to do it, fine.”

“It’s not my scene, Evangeline.”

“What scene? Why does it have to be a scene? We’re not filming porn.”

“I just don’t like my picture taken.”

“What you don’t like is being told what to do, how to move.”

He shrugged, and she nodded.

“But you aren’t even giving this a chance. You’re not giving me a chance. You do know that people pay me to take their picture, right?”

“People pay me to ink their flesh and I’m not pushing that on you.”

“Wow.” She hesitated, turning his words over in her mind. “I didn’t think asking you to pose was pushing something on you. You make it sound dirty and selfish.”

He came to her and reached out but she backed away from the gesture. She could not hide the accusatory disappointment in her voice. “Let’s not do this. I’m sorry I asked, let’s forget it. You don’t like your picture taken, I get it. I take pictures of people so that might be a problem for us. Between us, but right now let’s just forget it.”

“For me, it feels like being objectified.”

This hit her in a small direct way, the pebble on the windscreen, the damage done, the starred break threatening a larger cracking.


	4. Chapter 4

He was supine, half-clothed, giving himself over completely. The lamb to slaughter, the body to joy, the mind to contemplation. Flesh to the needled iron.

Both men were bent over him. Mark had a black Sharpie marker and Jack had a blue. They were conferring with the pens. Jack’s deafness did not hinder his pen flashing assured and smooth across Jakob’s torso, filling in the twining roses and thorns, leaves and canes, decorating Mark’s anatomical rendering of rib bones. Answering silent questions without words. They bent and drew and stepped back and considered.

Finally, the two artists nodded to one another. Mark pulled the stool back up to the edge of the table and the cruel machine buzzed to life. Jakob’s ribs began singing a song of pain to the thin striated muscles that held them one to the other. His flesh rendered raw. He could feel each outline of bone cage bars. An ache that burned, heated right through the center of what seemed to be everything, his body, his life. The black flames licking at each one of his vertebrae, so that he had to fight the urge, the need, to get up and move away from the pain of it.

He closed his eyes, searching out the place inside his mind where he could embrace it.


	5. Chapter 5

It was mid-April, the lion of winter holding the writhing world in clenched teeth, a slow reluctant dying. Mornings were still overcast in grey, afternoons marked by thin sunlight not strong enough to dry out the day’s damp beginning. Evenings ended with showers and stormy nights. Evangeline was ready for longer days of sunshine. She wanted to feel the heat sustained on her skin, seeping into her pores and warming her blood. Heating her bones until the marrow set on fire. She desperately wanted to see Mark in less restrictive clothing, wanted to trawl the riverbanks with him, drink beer, and lay on her back to watch the starry sky spin overhead. She wanted warm evenings spent melting her body into another’s body. She needed long hours that would bring them together rather than each passing day pushing them further apart. She wanted to believe that summer’s inherent feeling of limitless freedom would help her unloose the ligature that was tightening around the throat of their relationship.

The voice-mail alert dinged and she sighed and fished the phone out of her back-jean’s pocket. It was the tattoo parlor. She listened to Mark clear his throat and then tell her that the guy with the skeleton tattoo was in the studio. He would probably be there most of the day.

She stood staring intently at the phone in her hand, stunned out of her darkening mood. She had spent well over an hour sitting in front of the computer fighting a creative sludge, dredging through sticky pools of black tar for something shiny, something of worth, and coming up empty-handed. She had begun to doodle shamelessly over the top of various images and digital negatives until she had clicked each file closed, unsaved, in disgust. The morning had been edging towards becoming a day solidified in frustration.

She was overwhelmed with feelings of wasted desire.

She hadn’t forgotten the skeleton boy but she had put him out of her mind. And here he was rising as though a specter and Mark begrudgingly remembering his promise to her.

Quickly, she shifted gears, drank the last of the coffee in her cup, packed a camera bag, grabbed several bottles of organic orange juice, and left the house.

 

 

The sharp astringent smell of the soap and the warm smell of human flesh being happily abused greeted her as she entered the studio. The bells rang and the murmuring of male voices in Mark’s room stopped.

“It’s me, Mark,” she called out.

“We’re back here,” he answered from his studio space.

She set her gear down just outside his door, and pressed her shoulder against the threshold. It was the artist’s version of the Victorian operating theater. Jack and Frank were leaning, side-by-side, against the far wall, the patient inert upon the table. Mark was seated, hunched over him, one hand finger-splayed on the naked flesh to hold the skin taut, the other hand gloved in black and guiding the buzzing tool through its motions. She was overwhelmed by it and it took a few moments for her to begin to see the scene through her own artist’s eye, composing the images, framing the shots, calculating the camera settings, gauging the light. She stepped back out, hunkered down beside her camera bag and readied her equipment, then grabbed two bottles of orange juice.

“Juice?” she asked and Mark took his foot off the pedal and looked up. She showed him the bottle.

He turned and set the machine down on a counter top and peeled his gloves off, tossing them into a small waste can. “That’s exactly what I needed.”

“Would you like one?” she asked the young man who was now looking at her the way a sleeping cat disturbed will lift its head and glare out of slitted eyelids.

“Okay,” he said sullenly and she handed him one.

 

 

That night she sat surrounded by images of the skeleton. Her bank of computer monitors glowing, her humming Macs focusing her attention. The images were telling a story that she couldn’t quite read. Yet. The darkened room in which she worked on her digital visions was lit by the snapshots she had taken that afternoon. Most of the shots showcased Mark or Jack, each man working with concentration and skill on Jakob’s flesh, Mark outlining bones and whisking shading into the curving representation of ribs, Jack inking rose canes with thorns and then shading color into the petals and leaves. But that was familiar. After six months of working with the tattoo studio, she understood the art and the craft, the mechanics and the skill. She squinted and looked past the shapes and forms and attitudes of the two tattoo artists, she wanted to see the unknown and unfamiliar living canvas of Jakob. She wanted to be able to stare at him openly and at her leisure.

He had been sulky and surly, generating a sense of suspicion in person. He was overwhelming with the nearly full-body tattooed interpretation of his skeleton. His face was very difficult to look at for a long period of time. But captured on film he was something else; young, naive, and strangely innocent. His body vulnerable with its exposed inked bones, his face reluctantly compelling.

After spending over two hours in the studio that day, she had begun to understand some of Mark’s opinion of him. He was hard to read, no doubt, but he was also quite unlike Mark, as a man. Mark was sturdy and solidly masculine, Jakob was thin, and boyish with his head and face shaved clean. His entire demeanor was otherworldly. She wondered what he had been like before the intense tattoo.

She could see why Mark would dismiss him, find him difficult and frustrating. They had no common ground outside of ink, the process of it, the wearing of it. But even in that, she saw very little similarity. Mark was heavily tattooed but he wore his full sleeves, his neck pieces, his lettered knuckles as a badge, a visible secret handshake. Jakob’s ink was worn as though a costume, he was hiding and yet the disguise was anything but concealing.

Jack, the Deaf tattoo artist, seemed to have a different relationship with him. Opposite to Mark’s stark anatomical renderings, Jack’s work was beautiful and delicate and full of life. The twined roses and leaves spoke of poetry and lyricism. Jack seemed to like Jakob. He smiled at him often, nodding, indicating the fresh work or sympathizing with the pain. And he simply smirked whenever Jakob flashed attitude.

Jakob had tolerated her as viewer and photographer. Agreeing, with a strange tilt of his head down into his shoulder, to let her photograph the session. What at first glance appeared to be anger at the intrusion of the camera soon became an obvious and self-conscious shyness. He did not want to be studied, wanted only to be stared at. He seemed to expect and welcome a response of revulsion, fascinated horror. He did not want the empathetic eye trained on him. She had found this same attitude, this aggressive human demeanor, when she worked with the city’s homeless populations for a week-long series of newspaper articles. Special Interest they called it. She had spent days with the journalist, combing the downtown alleys, the parks, the river banks. She had photographed the forgotten residents, their tent cities, the Christian centers that fed and sheltered them, and the liquor stores where they congregated. They wanted to repel and yet they wanted desperately, she had learned, to be understood.

She bit her upper lip, nodding to herself now with the realization that Jakob was homeless in his own body.

She could hear Mark working in her kitchen. Night had fallen. She settled back into her chair, leaning it on its spring, looking from monitor to monitor and hoping beyond reasonable hope that the skeleton boy would honor the invitation she had extended to him to come to her studio. That he would be willing to reveal himself to her camera’s eye. Let her gaze upon him photographically with no distractions. He had said that he would, they had set the date for the coming Thursday afternoon. She would have to wait.

Behind her, Mark entered the small room and approached with two cold beers. He offered her one and she smiled, grateful.

“Dinner’s in the oven. Table’s set. How are you doing in here?”

“You’d make a great wife,” she laughed.

He was not laughing. “But you don’t really need a wife, do you?”

She turned away and quickly began to cycle through her computers, clicking files closed. She felt protective of the images of Jakob. She also knew that a close examination of them would reveal her interest in a new light.

Mark watched her close file after file. Sipping his beer. “Looks like you got some good shots.”

“I think so. Some great shots of you and Jack working.” She walked to one of the computers and cycled through a folder, opening a close-up of Mark’s gloved hand, his favorite iron, Jakob’s reddening flesh taut over his ribs outlined in black and grey ink. “I love this.”

“Yeah, my face isn’t in it.” He laughed.

“No, but it’s obviously you with your sleeves. And hey, you photograph great. You really have nothing to fear from the camera. I wish you would get over this thing, whatever it is, that you feel about photography.”

“You think?”

“Mark, you’re a handsome guy. Yes, I think.” She drank long from the bottle of dark imported beer, glancing pointedly at him.

“If you and my mother say it, it must be true.”

He didn’t look convinced. She walked over to him and pushed herself into his arms. He held her, his chin on her head. “It is true,” she said into his chest, against the placket of buttons on his black work shirt.

“I’ll take your word on it. I can avoid a mirror if I have to. You should have known me when I was actually one of the young and the beautiful.” He laughed but she knew this was a sore spot for him. Between them.

“Would you quit that already? You’re not even forty and if you’re acting like this now I can’t imagine the mid-life crisis you’re going to face when you’re really, actually, old.”

“One year away from the big four oh, baby. And get back to me in ten years or so when you’re thirty-nine and we’ll talk about it.”

“Funny.”

He released her and drank from his beer. “To be thirty again,” he said dramatically.

She kissed him and moved out of his arms. “Is it really that big of a difference? Forty?”

He looked at her, serious again. “It’s the halfway point, isn’t it? Now I’m counting backwards.”

This silenced her. She did not feel the press of time but could imagine why he did. She purposefully focused her attention back to the digital images. “I think we can use some of these close-ups if you and Frank still feel strongly about not using Jakob’s face or whatever. There’s a great one of Jack, let me find it –“She pulled up the file and opened it. Mark grunted approval. “If Frank would finish the article we could submit it to “Tattoo World” this week. We could use these two pictures. You have to get on him about that.”

“Your wish, m’lady –“

“Mark, why don’t you give a crap about the article?”

“Hey, you’re reading me wrong. I care about it. Your photos are great! But getting on Frank is like wrestling with a tree sloth. I’ll talk to him again on Tuesday, but I can’t promise you that he’ll get it done.” He tried to reach for her hand, but she pretended not to see the gesture and instead sat back down in the chair and began mousing over an image. He finished his beer, rolling the bottle between his palms. “Why don’t you write it?” he asked into the empty space between them.

“Me? I don’t write. I barely do email. Frank is good. I’ll talk to him.”


	6. Chapter 6

The morning was bright. The day new and shiny. He pushed the hood off his head, took his hands out of the hoodie pockets and walked a swinging, jaunty step down the sidewalk.

“Now, you’re a man who can’t get away with anything.”

He knew he was being addressed. It was a skill hard-earned from a childhood of being ignored. He stopped, taking in the legless veteran seated in a filthy, rusty wheelchair, leaning hard on an elbow against one arm of the manual machine, slovenly beard, tangled hair, and eyes that saw to the other side of the world and back again. A small cardboard sign was propped against one of the wheels, beside a metal box with its lid opened.

Jakob looked at him, on the defensive, then got the joke and smiled. He bowed low, with an outrageous, exaggerated flourish of his arms.

“Or," the man continued, "You’re a man who can get away with everything.”

Jakob straightened, laughed out loud and walked closer. He hunkered down beside the chair, back pressed against the storefront brick wall. Digging a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket he lipped one and handed the pack to the man.

The man nodded his thanks and Jakob waved the pack back at him when he tried to return it. The man’s hand trembled as he brought the cigarette to his lips. Jakob leaned up and lit it for him, lit his own, settled in, and dropped the lighter into the open box.

“Didja win the battle?” the veteran asked, coughing wetly.

He glanced sideways at the man in the wheelchair, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “What’s that?”

“The battle? Didja win then?”

Jakob shook his head, the smile on his lips pulling the toothy grin of the skeleton wide across his face. “What battle?”

“You against the world.”

Still smiling, but with his own teeth showing now. The effect was disturbing. “No, old man. Not yet.” They smoked. “You?”

The old man coughed again. “I was a fuckin’ god of war. Don’t it look like I might’ve won?” He indicated his missing legs, the street, the chair, himself locked into his body.

“You feel trapped inside there?” Jakob looked at him hard.

“Probably the same as you.”

After a long time, the man fell asleep, snoring and drooling. Jakob pulled himself back to his feet, standing protectively beside the human wreck. He dug deep into his jean pockets, pulling out wadded bills, and change, and a scrawled address on a slip of paper. He separated the paper out, pushed it back into his pocket and gently poured the handful of money into the box. He walked on.


	7. Chapter 7

“To the world’s freakiest profession – artists with balls of steel,” Frank addressed the small group, punctuating the sentiment by raising his glass of single malt. Mark and Evangeline leaned across the coffee table to clink their own glasses to his toast.

Emma was drinking water from a wine goblet, Jack beside her had a beer but had missed the impromptu toast and Emma was signing it slowly to him. He got the gist of her faltering signs, quickly nodded, and raised his bottle to the others who toasted the profession again.

“What exactly makes it so freaky though, Frank?” Evangeline asked, settling back against the couch, beside Mark.

It was early evening and the five of them had gone to dinner at the new sushi restaurant around the corner and were finishing the evening in her loft. Whiskey-chasing-beer nightcaps, and a game of modified Liar’s Dice. Emma was keeping score.

Frank looked at her with a boggled expression. She raised a quick hand in mock apology. “I’m not questioning you, just asking why.”

“There’s no other line of work like it. Not really. You get to put your personal artwork on people, put the hurt on them, and they pay you to do it. You’re an artist but not one of them emo types. We’re like those cats who parachute off bridges and buildings and into the Grand Canyon except we, uh, you know, draw.” He snickered and finished his drink, holding the glass out to Evangeline.

“Why does that make sense?” Emma asked, laughing.

Mark was nodding. “It’s a heavy responsibility in some ways. Other ways not so much. It depends on the client, the work.”

“Not all tattoo artists feel that way though, do they?” Evangeline asked, tipping more whisky into Frank’s glass. “And it’s your turn, Frank.”

“I wouldn’t let them carve on me if they didn’t. But yeah, there are scratchers out there.” Frank answered, picking up the handful of dice and rolling them into an open space on the coffee table.

“Not in my place,” Mark said.

“Not in Mark’s place.”

Jack leaned over the table and helped Frank count his dice. They all knew a rudimentary American Sign Language and counted their numbers in ASL. Frank rolled again and Jack remained leaning forward, elbows on his knees to watch. Evangeline smiled to herself, Frank cheating at the game was always a possibility and each player had one or several crumpled dollar bills in the growing kitty. Another roll and Frank indicated he wanted the total tallied, Jack and Emma conferred on their fingers before Jack scooped up the dice for his turn.

Frank and Mark began disparaging a new tattoo shop that had opened in the shopping mall. Evangeline settled against the back of the sofa, watching her guests. Jack began to roll the dice, Emma ready with paper and pen, one hand lightly resting on his thigh. Evangeline noticed that she had fresh ink on the outside of her forearm, the colors vividly bright, her skin peeling as though sunburnt. Evangeline wondered for a moment about Jack and his new girlfriend, about Emma’s willingness to showcase Jack’s amazing work on her body. The pain of it, the permanence of it. The commitment and the dedication.

She wondered why she was not mentioning the appointment she had arranged with Jakob for the following day.

Jack scooped up the dice and poured them into Emma’s hand, then turned and signed the familiar “shut up and play” to the other two men. Mark laughed out loud, nodding his assent.


	8. Chapter 8

The skeleton and his unannounced female companion were standing dumbfounded in Evangeline’s living space.

She watched him take it all in from the corners of his eyes.

The young woman was staring openly. Not envious, she was completely and utterly out of her depth. Evangeline grew defensive watching the younger woman assess her home. She knew what her guests were seeing.

The massive portrait canvasses leaning against the walls gave the impression of indiscriminate afterthought, but she remembered every moment invested in them, from the photo session, to the digital darkroom work, to the decision to print and stretch them. This conscious display, the exhibitionist who undresses in front of the back-lit window, waiting for the accidental voyeur. The girl examined each image then her gaze slid across to the coffee table littered with a ridiculous number of burnt candles in various size and vintage sterling sticks, a half a six-pack worth of empty bottles of imported beer, dirty glasses, and a bottle of single malt whiskey standing guard beside three amber-stained crystal tumblers. The haphazard six dice and the piece of scratch paper score card with a dirty cartoon Jack had sketched for Emma’s blushing benefit. She looked past the two low-slung sofas, fantastically long and promising all manner of human comfort and company and into the small but expensive stainless-steel kitchen.

Evangeline felt deeply irritated at the sudden urge to owe them some form of explanation or apology. She had been waiting anxiously for the arrival of this day, this hour, this moment. When the knock came at the door she surprised herself with disappointment when she opened the door to not just him but this overbearing, unkempt companion. Not quite a woman and no longer really a girl, but younger than Jakob, probably not yet drinking age. Eyeing the two of them out of a squinted gaze, Evangeline wondered how old Jakob was. It was something she hadn’t considered before. The tattoo aged him years, moreover just the legal requirements for being tattooed, the amount of ink he was wearing, the hours and months of time invested. It lent him a strange timelessness. The borrowed air of masquerade. But the girl-woman was quite of the world, with her artificially blackened hair streaked blue, the overly-made up eyes, the too-tight jeans and the too-loose tank top. The red bra, the purple nails. The thick lip-gloss. All contrasting to Evangeline’s natural demeanor, the meticulously applied foundation, the smoky eyeliner and mascara, matte lips. Her highlighted hair and her jeans and black turtleneck. Her casual attire a conscious costume.

“Over here,” Evangeline said. She began walking quickly through the open floor plan into the studio area that made up half the loft space. The camera was on a tripod, there were lights on stands, black and yellow electrical cords snaking across the cement floor, overhead tracks of lighting, umbrellas and soft boxes, and the brick and ironwork wall that rose to the height of the second floor of the warehouse building. A bank of glass window panes looked out over the train tracks and into the seedier part of town. The space was heady, the smell of old metal and the sweat of long-dead men. The walls were permeated with the history of the building; it had seen day-to-day toil now faded into fanciful imaginings.

She turned to see their reaction and the girl’s face was brooding with confusion and discomfort. She was out of her element.

The boy was harder to read under the slouchy hoodie, but she could see him still flicking his gaze from side to side. He was casing her and the studio. What new thievery would this bring, she wondered. He did not know that she was the master thief. She would steal his soul with her camera, primitive belief proven fact in this 21st century live-work space. She had already begun a kind of photographic pickpocketing of his person, a small larceny. Now she wanted to steal handsomely from him.

“How do you afford all this?” the girl asked. “You an artist?”

Evangeline nodded, hesitant to speak it aloud. “I like to think so.” She laughed, trying to take the edge off the uncomfortably sharp moment. Both looked at her unsmiling.

“You can make this kind of money being an artist? That's not what they told me in school.”

She lowered her head, turning her face away from the accusation in the girl's voice.

“What the fuck is it to you?” Jakob broke his silence, whipping his words at the girl-woman.

Evangeline stilled with surprise at his vehemence. He had turned a deadly voice on his companion. She watched the other woman’s face close, crumple quickly in pain, then open again with anger.

Evangeline intervened verbally. “No, she's right. You're right. I mean, screw what they tell you in high school. But I do work as a regular photographer. I shoot two weddings a month, and take maternity portraits, pictures of pregnant moms. I also contract as an independent photo-journalist for the paper. Grunt work.” She stalled. She wasn’t sure the girl was listening, although she was looking. Finally, she nodded acknowledgement.Evangeline offered refreshment. The girl wanted soda which she did not have. He said he wanted a stiff drink if he was supposed to undress. She brought them both tall iced orange juices and splashed his with vodka. The girl had been whispering to him and silenced immediately when she returned. No one had introduced them, names felt like an intrusive afterthought at this point and Evangeline decided she didn’t care. She knew his name and wondered if he remembered hers. The girl claimed an armchair at the edge of the set. Jakob sipped his drink. Evangeline watched him catch taste of the vodka and drink deeply.

She began readying equipment, ignoring the spectator. Deciding that she had no choice but to act as though she was alone with her model, to create an illusion of that privacy. The relationship between the boy and the girl was hard to categorize. For the girl’s part, possessive, definitely more than friends, but less than a couple. She mentally shook herself at how ridiculous it was for her to consider the girl, or him, or their relationship at all.

“Have you done any portrait work?” she asked him quietly.

The girl leaned forward. He was quiet and she answered for him. “No, not like this. Everyone who sees him wants to take his picture. For money, you know.”

“You haven’t worked with a professional photographer?” Evangeline asked again, moving towards him with a light meter. Any excuse to be in his space, block the other woman out. He watched her approach and finished the drink quickly. She took the proffered glass.

He shook his head. “That was good. Thanks.” He shrugged. “No. I haven’t. No one’s ever asked.”

“You’re welcome.” She nodded, in his presence now, holding the meter next to his face, moving it down the length of his neck, out the span of his shoulder. “It will be fun. I promise.”

“Don’t matter.”

“It does, though.” She lowered the meter, looking at him. She felt a strange familiarity with his face; she had been studying the shots she had taken at the studio for a week, working with them, refining them. She knew the shape of the skull’s eyeholes arching up to his brow bone, skittering down his temples and back across the tops of his cheekbones. But she hadn’t known the intensity of the blue-eyed gaze. She realized with a start that he was beautiful, beneath the tattoo.

“Yeah?” he asked. He looked dubious, doubtful.

“If it’s not fun, it’ll show up in the pictures. Really.”

“Maybe I need another one of them drinks.”

She laughed and for a flashing moment his gaze lightened, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly beneath the black and grey tattooed ink and the filler black eyeliner that looked several days old.

“We’ll see. Inebriation will show up in the pictures, too.”

From behind them the girl spoke. “He ain’t going to get drunk off two drinks.”

“You want me to take this off?” He shrugged one shoulder beneath the hoodie.

“Not yet.”

He smirked. “Later, huh?”

Evangeline smiled and turned away. She set the empty glass down on the floor and hung the light meter on the camera tripod.

The girl was watching her. “You could make pornos in here.”

“That’s a thought,” Evangeline said, her voice as though swatting at a bothersome insect. She bent over, gazing into the eyepiece. Inside the view finder the skeleton was looking back.

She began working. Small directions, a continued stepping back and away from the camera, re-evaluating, a fine line between her brows as she studied him. He responded quickly with movements equal to her requests.

And the girl kept up an irritating commentary. Evangeline felt herself constricted by the ownership the other was projecting towards him. It was irksome and impinging upon her and the work she wanted desperately to do. He was oblivious to it.

Finally, he began shucking some of his clothes when asked. The hoodie first and then he pulled a t-shirt emblazoned with the cryptic message – _Fate Loves the Fearless_ – over his head. The girl stood, with her hand out, and he tossed her the ragged clothing. She sat back down. Evangeline watched her smooth the garments into her lap, her hand stroking the fabric.

Evangeline felt a frisson of possibility shudder through her as she became spectator. Jakob was hovered on the edge of transformation, and he became amazing, partially undressed, thin, brandishing the skeleton the way a male ballet dancer would wear elaborate costuming. He moved naturally under direction, his body assuming pose after pose, his face mirroring her requests for expression, the rare laugh a reward, the smile a tantalizing promise. She stared at him through the lens, devouring him.

His face and head were fully covered by the skull tattoo. The blackened eye-holes, the nose artfully inked at the bridge indicating the paper-thin bone there, the illusion of a nasal gapping nearly flawless. Shaded concaves and lined striations in the tattooed bones gave the skull shape, seam lines bolting across his shaved head. The mouth was impressive, the dentition beautifully outlined, each tooth in its tattooed socket, shading accentuating the bones of the upper and lower jaw, solid black hollows in front of each mandibular joint. For a fleeting moment, she could not help but think of Mark, the decisions he had made, the unusual choices he had faced and how right they had been for this work. But Jakob’s face, his demeanor, was so immediate that thoughts of the tattoo artist were secondary, fading away from her.

She had seen him shirtless at the studio but at the time he had been lying on a table, in pain, sweating and grimacing. Now he was in control of his body, the tilt of the fearful head, the bones outlined down his arms, the fragile breastbone bracketed with ribs, the muted colors of the roses, the green of the twining stems, the leaves were all his to display, his skin. The effect of him slouched, staring at her with his hands deep in his jeans pockets, the waistband of his briefs riding high on his hip bones and his shoulders hunched forward in a masculine approximation of modesty, was overwhelming.

She had to step away from the ravenous camera. She went to bring him another drink.

“Your ribs are healed?” she asked when she returned.

He nodded, smiling, looking down to where his tattooed finger bones spread and pressed at the new ink.

“Good. That’s good.”

Behind them the girl-woman stood and announced it was time to leave.

 

 

“Next time?” Evangeline’s voice was hard and the question was meant as the beginning of an order.

The two of them were standing inside, at the open front door. The girl was outside, on the sidewalk smoking, affecting a look of boredom, waiting.

“There’s going to be a next time?” he muttered but she could hear hope in the surly voice.

She looked at him and nodded slowly. “Maybe. I’ll see what we’ve got here and then I’ll know more.” She suddenly and desperately wanted there to be a next time. He had become a cavernous vein rich to be mined.

“Okay.” He turned away, shrugging into the ratty hoodie.

“But next time, don’t bring your girlfriend.”

His back was to her. He pulled the hood over his head, zipped the jacket. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

He glanced quickly over his shoulder and she recognized the way her heart stood up towards him. Interested. The man inside the skeleton had cast her heart a gaze and her blood answered.

“Whatever,” she said.

And he was gone.


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, Evangeline woke from strange dreams. She set to work with the session, in her pajamas, fueled with strong coffee. She developed the medium format film; long curling strips of negatives hanging, drying in her bathroom, transparent flypaper catching miniature human figures. She resisted the urge to stretch them out to the light, peer at their reversed images. She had a sharp longing biting at her thoughts, a desire for the perfect photograph. It was an emotion she hadn’t experienced in years. The years she had spent desperately learning the art of photography, the terrible frustration with inadequate skills, the missed shots, the blurry portraits, the wrong settings for the attempted covert picture. She had struggled with the apposition between the images which her mind captured perfectly and the imperfect images her cameras were spitting out.

Her desire for a single frame of Jakob that would indicate a kind of artistic perfection for her was a hungry gnawing. And when she scanned the film negatives and uploaded them to her computer, she hesitated before opening the files. She downloaded the digital negatives from her dSLR and prepped them to be opened. Then she sat down, slowly, carefully, lowering herself into the chair, biting at the inside of her cheek. With curled fingertips she massaged her forehead, her closed eyelids, tapping gently at her temples, trying to sort her feelings, name the reason for her hammering heartbeat. Explain the starving sensation in her mind.

She began clicking open the files.


	10. Chapter 10

Three nights later, she lay on her back beside Mark. He was drifting across the border of sleep. They had come to a new place in their relationship, a fragile bond between them. Evangeline felt an overwhelming need to hold on, hold fast to him, but she could feel herself also wanting to let go.

“How old is Jakob?” she asked into the dark of her bedroom.

He went still beside her, roused from stepping over into unconsciousness. “Younger than you.”

“Not by much. He seems young though, doesn’t he?”

“I guess. I don’t know how old he is exactly.”

“C’mon.”

“Well, let’s see. He first showed up when he was eighteen. He had some crappy home-made memorial tattoo, a skull, on his back. It was not good. But he knew what he wanted even then.”

She interrupted him. “Memorial tattoo? That’s a thing?”

He sighed. “Memorium ink. Yeah. It’s a thing. His brother committed suicide. It was for him.”

“What? Really?”

“Wouldn’t joke about that, Evie.”

“You remember this?”

“I guess so. I guess I do.”

“And he wanted a full body skeleton? He wanted his face tattooed like that?”

Mark’s breathing changed slightly.

“Mark?”

“He had these drawings and a wad of cash. He wanted the scratcher piece covered, but that was on his back and he wanted, you know, to see the work. So we began with his arm, skeletonized it, Jack inked the flowers, filling in the negative spaces. It was pretty complicated, trying to figure out how to make it look like this idea he had in his head, to give it depth so it didn’t look drawn on. About two years after that we started on his neck and head.”

“His face?”

“His face.” He was quiet for a long moment. Then he began counting out loud deliberately. “He must be twenty-three.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

In the silence that separated them he turned away from her and she listened to him fall into sleep. She felt the thin cord between them begin to tear in the slightest and most devastating of ways.

 


	11. Chapter 11

A deeply buried memory of a television station’s static sign-off surfaced in his brain and slowly he opened his eyes. The front room was illuminated only by the flickering of a long-dead sitcom playing out on the TV set in the corner. They had fallen asleep on the sofa and he was wedged into the corner, one foot up on the coffee table, one on the floor, and his arm prickling pins and needles. Tami was sleeping heavily beside him, pressing him deeper into the ratted upholstery, her head on his shoulder, his protesting limb awkwardly bent between them. His shirt was wet through to the skin where she was drooling.

With a practiced stealth, he moved out from beneath her and she made a noise that sounded an angry moan in the darkened room. He stood and rolled his shoulders and shook the blood back into his hand. He refused to look down to where she had curled sideways into the space he had created. She was asleep again, a snoring homage to the copious amounts of alcohol they had drunk into the late evening.

He knew where the pack of cigarettes was by touch on the coffee table, he scooped the packet and a lighter up, bouncing the lighter off his palm, and pushed his way out the slightly open front door. He breathed in the scent of the night air before lighting a cigarette, obliterating everything but the pungent smell of burning tobacco. Lowering himself to the cement stoop, sitting forward, elbows on his knees, he smoked and thought of the photographer. The elegant shape of her. How serious she seemed to be. He thought of the long hair that shone and swung free until she gathered it all up between her two hands, quickly and expertly braiding it and then tossing it back over her shoulder. Tending the glorious hair was a commonplace task for her.

He recognized that he had been studied but there was no offense in her gaze. Something else was there, something he had never seen before when being looked at. She wanted something from him. That intent had been clear in her words but more so in the attention she had paid him. He went over the memories from the morning in her studio, playing model to her direction. He ground out the cigarette between thumb and finger scattering the paper and burnt leaves, and wondered if he had ever seen a television station sign off in real time or if he had just seen it on the Internet.


	12. Chapter 12

The “Un Show” call for entries flyer had been tacked up on her inspiration cork wall in her digital darkroom for months. She desperately wanted to enter. “Unveil, uncover, unmask, unearth”. She had tumbled the themes over and over in her mind, rubbing the sharper edges off, removing the obvious interpretations, the mediocre and tired meanings. Seeking a new surface. Then, unexpectedly, it came to her in a late-night drunken vision with friends tangled like puppies on the two sofas that made up the bulk of her living space. Unclothed, untouchable. The following headachy morning, surfacing from sleep, it morphed behind her eyelids into something concrete, something that had her leaping out of bed and rushing into the studio to find paper and pencil. On paper, it worked. It worked so well that she felt it give her a head rush, jetting through her with affirmation.

The idea was simple; portraits of heavily tattooed men with women in varying degrees of intimacy, partially unclothed, clad in ink, untouchable flesh made touchable. The months of straight forward candid shots and portraiture for the tattoo studio, creating photographic fodder for advertising media, had opened this door in her mind. She took the months spent paying quiet attention to Mark’s flesh, the inked shape of him, as mental proofs necessary to direct the more finished work.

When Jack asked her to photograph him with Emma, the idea began to solidify. Emma was beautiful and petite and freckled from head to toe. Her flesh fitted tightly over her compact and feminine frame. From lens to print her skin teased the viewer into wanting to touch her, run a finger over the dark brown freckles. An offhand quip from Frank about Emma’s Irish skin and Jack’s roommate Kelly’s Celtic ink brought her original vision to the stepping off point of creation.

The women would be photographed with more than one man.

Kelly and Emma’s portraits were stunning, her freckled flesh and his shamrocks, her auburn hair, his tattooed knot work.

Frank asked two close friends to pose with him, the stark black design of his tattooed native beard and their open red-lipped mouths on his face almost scandalous in its focus. When Evangeline cast them with Jack the two women moved as though cats across his body, dressed in skintight black reaching past his colorful sleeves for one another.

Mark had been a reluctant witness to each of the sessions as well as the post-processed results. He finally agreed to pose and his stilted demeanor was a good match for Kelly’s equally uncomfortable older lover. Even Evangeline couldn’t coax him past a moderate relaxation, alone with him in the darkened studio space. Later, he acknowledged her skill with a gruff head nod and a sidelong, fascinated glance at his frozen image.

Then, Jakob had come to the studio. She had had no conscious plan, the shutter remote in her hand, thumb clicking, working with her new model. The next day, looking at the digital negatives of the day’s work with the skeleton, she stared at an image of herself reaching for him, directing his movement, leaning in close, blurring out the world. Abruptly she had risen to her feet and stepped back. The image fit seamlessly, flawlessly into her theme. She had sucked her lips between her biting teeth and wondered at the mystery of art working with a subconscious palette.


	13. Chapter 13

“These pictures are going to make this thing crazy.” Mark had said one late night, over her shoulder, watching her work with each file, save, discard, start again.

She had nodded, still at the place of uncertainty. She felt that it was good, something that she would want to see. Stark portraits with basic lighting but when professionally rendered the subjects had been transformed by her hand, her vision. Reverent objectification and fetishistic ownership had been the driving force behind her art since she was a child, fumbling with her first camera, finding faces that compelled. “It might” she had answered him.

The test prints slowly gave way to refined images. Moments in time had been artistically manipulated into static contemplations, offering the viewer the time necessary to observe.

When all the images were stretched on square canvases and hung strategically in the gallery the clothed women appeared as sexual wraiths, capable of moving from frame to frame and man to man. The unclothed men were solid in their photographed frames, in their poses, the inked bodies immovable. They were of the flesh, tethered to it, trapped within it.

She studied each canvas as though it had been unseen by her before, somehow always fresh and new. Several weeks of work condensed into a single offering, a statement of purpose, an exhibition of her craft, a subtle revelation of her inspiration. Evangeline stood in the middle of the warehouse gallery and was tantalized.

 


	14. Chapter 14

Opening night of the gallery show began slowly, individuals wandering in, perusing the collected works, small groups skittering in through the open doors, massed before the more provocative pieces. Evangeline was standing on the upper catwalk that led to the office. She was quiet, watching the small crowd grow, her back against the wall, pressing herself away from the railing. Jim and Charles, the curators, had gone down to the floor, both of them suited up and looking sharp and she appreciated that. They were very serious about the shows they hung.

She was watching for Mark and Frank and Jack, sipping a beer out of the bottle, trying to calm her nerves. She could not look at her work now, could not bear to consider it for fear of becoming violently ill with regret and more, with shame. She had been grappling with that response to her own work for over five years. Gone was her impetuous college self, the bravado, the brazen disregard for rules. She had become cautious although the work had definitely grown more outrageous in scope and sheer technical prowess than her in early years. It was good. She knew that, and yet she struggled with the legitimacy of her subject choices. Questioning the obvious appropriation, the way in which she personalized other people’s faces and bodies, things that did not belong to her but that she had claimed ownership of with the camera.

She sighed and scanned the crowd. Jakob suddenly materialized in a ragged group moving through the front doors. He had the ubiquitous hood up and over his head, wraparound sunglasses, hands deep in the front pockets of his sagging blue jeans. He was incognito insofar as he could be, concealed in his crowd, inside of his clothing, and Evangeline surprised herself with how quickly she identified him. Instantly. The posture, the height and breadth of him. She realized she knew the shape of him, recognized his body in space.

The young woman was with him and another girl and two unappealing men. No one had noticed him. Yet. Evangeline stepped forward, bare wrists on the metal railing and watched him. He had not seen the finished work, he had not seen much of any of the work outside one test sheet and a few images she had let him scroll through on her monitor. From the set of his head she knew he was looking at her work. She thought of the way his gaze would habitually flit to the corners of his eyes.

The canvases had been hung linearly, beginning with Kelly, then Jack, then Frank, Mark, and finishing with Jakob. He had stopped and was looking at Mark’s portraits. He pushed the sunglasses onto his forehead and she watched him bend close to one image then lean away. He took a step back. The girl said something to him but Evangeline saw no acknowledgment. She wondered what had captured his interest. And decided, impulsively, to go down to the floor early. She swigged the remainder of the beer and left the bottle on the top step of the catwalk.

She was dressed to her personal nines for the opening. Strappy high heels, black silk stockings, and a requisite little black dress. She had wrapped her long, blond hair into a French twist. A beautiful sterling clip engraved with human skulls, a gift from Mark, held the up-do in place. Long earrings with glass stones that caught the light and reflected it back into her eyes hung from her ears. She felt good and she breathed in deeply, trying to find a confidence that would carry her through the night.

She moved through friends and acquaintances, way-laid by well-wishers, Jim asking her a question about a price, someone pushing a flute of champagne into her hand, another fierce embrace and then Jakob was in front of her. She felt her self-confidence strangely stutter with a stumble of self-consciousness watching him watch her move towards him. He looked confident, the skull acting the part of bad boy celebrity, and she wondered if she were imagining how hard won that posturing was for him or if she really didn’t know him at all.

He tilted his head, indicating one of the portraits of Mark. “I didn’t know you two were together.”

She turned and looked at the image. Mark nude, the soft focus of the muscled length of his thighs and back. Her arm, her hand, her shoulder.

“You knew that was me?” She was more than surprised.

He shrugged. And nodded. “Whatever.”

 

 

Less than an hour later and Jim was on her right side. “Your tattooed star is leaving and it really would be cool if he stayed. Without his friends, preferably.” He smiled this into her ear.

She looked over to where she had last seen Jakob and his retinue. Not there. Jim indicated the area and she caught movement. The group was downing flutes of champagne punk-rock style and she grimaced. She nodded and walked over.

“You leaving?” she asked, moving in as close to Jakob as she could without physically shoving the girl next to him. There was nothing about her she liked, nothing she could find redeemable, although she had to admit she wasn’t interested in trying. They had squared off as adversaries. Dressed and coiffed as she was the contrast between them was as stark as midnight and noon. Pointedly, she ignored the young woman.

Jakob looked over. Again, with the shrugging. Evangeline wanted to shake him.

“I wish you would stay. Do you like the work?”

His faux-bored gaze slipped slightly. He nodded, pursing his lips in approval. She stepped up closer and slipped her arm through his. She could feel his body stiffen in response, but she wasn’t going to be put off. “Walk with me, Jakob, for a minute.”

“We’re leaving,” one of the men interrupted.

“I know. Give me five,” he answered and she drew him away.

She steered him towards the long side wall and stood in front of his portraits. He nodded to the image that she was in, bending over him, beckoning, a contemporary Sibyl.

“You didn’t tell me you took that.”

“No.”

“Isn’t that tricking a guy?”

“In what way?” She turned to him and there was a glimmer of humor in his eyes.

“I see what you’re doing here.” He made a small sweeping movement with his hand. “I’m not entirely stupid. I get it. The women moving from one man to another. Why didn’t you just ask me to do something like that?”

She felt caught out and let go of his arm and stepped sideways. “I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re stupid, Jakob. You’re right. I should have talked to you about it.”

“Next time.”

She smiled, too broadly, the evening’s alcohol heating her from the inside out. She leaned in quickly and kissed him on the cheek. He recoiled but then reached up a hand, reaching for her, but she had already instinctively responded, moved out of his sphere. “Next time. Yes. I will.”

The woman appeared at his shoulder. “Let’s go, Jake.”

“I wish you would stay.” Evangeline said.

“They’re my ride.”

The other woman’s gaze was on her.

“I can figure out how to get you home. People want to see you, talk with you,” Evangeline told him.

“We could stay if you can get us a ride back to our place,” the young woman said firmly.

Evangeline could not keep her face from registering surprise. She locked her gaze onto his, trying to communicate without words or facial expression. She had been trumped. And who was the harpy now, willing to rip him in half between them.

“Give me a minute. Okay?” he asked her.

She nodded, looking pointedly away. Mark was talking with Kelly and Maura at the center of the gallery space and she moved towards them.

Mark smiled at her approach, settling an arm over her shoulder. “It seems to be going well. Are you happy?”

She felt distracted by the brief flare she had just stepped away from, but she smiled up at him. “I’m thrilled. And have you guys to thank for it.”

“How’s the skeleton boy?”

Before she could answer Maura interrupted. “His portraits are amazing, Evangeline. I mean really, really amazing. Art. He’s living art.”

She curtsied theatrically. “Thank you. He was easy to photograph, reputation notwithstanding. But the credit has to go to Mark and Jack. Their work is just outrageous.”

“I would like to meet him. Is he here?”

“He’s here, but I don’t know if he’s staying. He might have just left. He’s got a pushy girlfriend and apparently she rules that roost.”

Mark tapped Evangeline on the head gently and Jakob stepped into the group. She couldn’t tell if he had overheard. She blushed hot.

“And here he is. Maura, Kelly, this is Jakob. Jakob, Maura and Kelly.”

“Your ink is something else, man,” Kelly said, extending his hand.

For a long moment Evangeline thought Jakob would not take it, but he did and Kelly pulled the younger man to him with a quick, gruff hand on the back, conferring the classic male greeting.

“We have the same artist,” Jakob said simply.

“Jack has done all my work,” Kelly negated.

Jakob shrugged out of the hoodie and Evangeline felt the response of people standing around their grouping. The metamorphosis from chrysalis to dark moth. She held a hand out for the jacket and he relinquished it. He was wearing a tattered t-shirt with the sleeves torn off and unbelievably the front was emblazoned with -  _It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time_. She was rendered speechless by it. But his long, thin arms were really what he was showing off and he turned one arm in front of Kelly and Maura, pointing at the elaborate roses and stems that were winding around the length of the tattooed long bones. “That’s Jack there.” He pointed with a tattooed finger.

“So it is. Nice.”

“And the rest, the skeleton parts are Mark’s work?” Maura asked.

Mark and Jakob looked at one another, both nodding. Another tray of champagne flutes went past and Jakob grabbed for one, downing it quickly, turning the flute nervously between his palms. “Mark’s great.”

Mark inclined his head.

A loud silence fell between them, the murmuring of people around them filling the emptied space.

“Evangeline, I want to talk to you about one of our pictures,” Maura said after a long moment, looking from one face to the other quickly. She began walking towards the wall where Kelly’s portraits were hanging.

Jakob walked close beside Evangeline as they followed.

“You alone?” she asked. And regretted it instantly. But he nodded and relief flowed through her.

“That’s what you wanted, right?” He scowled.

“I didn’t want anything except for you to stay longer.”

“Sure.”

His voice was maddening. She felt an unexpected familial tie with him, as though they were devolving into a sibling hissing fight in public. She turned her attention to Maura and began discussing options to hang several large portraits in her home. Jakob hung at her elbow, a grumpy child.

 

Opening night was over. They were sprawled on the sofas in Evangeline’s loft. Jim and Charlie, the museum owners and curators were squeezed comfortably together in the single over-sized chair, their legs tangled. Mark was slouched down beside Evangeline, Jakob on her other side on one of the long sofas. Dan’l and his two women, whom she had photographed with Frank and Jack, were on the opposite sofa squeezed in beside Kelly and Maura. The group had disintegrated into nodding drunks. Two large bowls of popcorn were on the coffee table between the couches, punctuated with open bottles of beer and wine and wine glasses. Music was playing low.

“Am I the only person who has to work in the morning?” Mark asked the room to a responding laughter.

“Does that mean we’re nixing the orgy, big Mark?” asked one of Dan’l’s women, the younger one, leering at the room. Evangeline looked at her, trying to remember her name, Carla? Carly? They were about the same age and had connected quickly, irreverent joking, during the photography sessions.

Dan’l squeezed her against him and shushed her, his mouth in her hair.

“I hate to keep anyone from a good orgy, but yeah, count me out.” He was readying himself to stand.

Jakob had a bottle of beer raised halfway to his mouth and was staring at the woman over it.The other woman leaned forward, across Dan’l’s lap and lightly slapped the first on one of her bare legs. Both were wearing miniskirts and tantalizing high heels. “Carly doesn’t really want an orgy. She just wants to make out with someone other than the two of us.”

Jakob took a deep drink from the bottle then shoved it between his thighs and sat back, one arm wide on the sofa. He was watching the three of them intently.

The first woman laughed, her face was beautiful, her mouth full and the sound of her merriment beyond delightful. “Au contraire, I would totally be down with an orgy. But,” she stuck a petulant tongue out at the other woman, “I love just kissing, too. I do. I do.”

“Who doesn’t, now shush,” Dan’l said to her and pressed his mouth full on hers. She twined a thin arm around the side of his head, holding his face to hers.

Maura laughed beside them. “Oh, believe me, some people don’t like it. They just do not like to kiss.”

Dan’l pulled himself away and Carly was nodding at Maura. “That is true. He doesn’t know because he loves it. Who here likes to kiss?” She raised both her hands, wriggling. The rest raised a hand, Jim and Charlie kissed one another and Kelly and Maura clinked the bottoms of their beer bottles together.

“Mark, your hand isn’t up.” The other woman said. Evangeline knew without looking that his hand would not be raised. He really did not like to kiss.

“Yeah, I could take it or leave it honestly. And hey, that must be my cue to exit stage left.” He stood, cracking his back with his thumbs pressed into the small of it while he stretched up on the balls of his feet. He leaned down towards Evangeline and asked if he could crash in her bed. She nodded. “Night all. I’ve got a client coming into the studio at nine. Keep your kissing quiet.”

Evangeline watched Jakob watch Mark as he disappeared through a far doorway, a light switching on then off. He raised his arm up behind her, to the back of the couch. She could feel the electricity of his fingertips almost brushing her shoulder.

“Maybe it’s a guy thing?” she said, directing her attention back to the room. “Maybe girls like to kiss more?”

Maura was shaking her head. “I don’t know if that’s statistically true, but yeah, I’ve known guys who don’t like it at all.”

“But not that guy?” Carly asked, pointing at Kelly.

“Not this guy,” Maura smiled and Kelly pulled her into a quick kiss.

“Not these two guys,” Jim said and Charlie kissed him.

“There’s girls who don’t like to kiss,” Jakob said. And the room grew quiet.

“Not me!” Carly exclaimed and stood quickly; crossing the two steps over to the couch where Evangeline and Jakob were seated, bending towards Jakob who had gone very still. “Kiss me,” she said and leaned in.

Evangeline held her breath. She did not want to see this woman kiss him. She turned her body sideways, reaching for the beer she had abandoned in the last hour. She swallowed the last of it, gaze on the floor. Beside her, Carly had her mouth on Jakob's mouth.

Evangeline leaned forward, setting the bottle back down on the table and could not keep herself from looking up and sideways, watching the two of them. Jakob’s arms were spread wide on the back of the sofa but he was allowing the kiss, Carly tried to put her knee between both of his but this he did not encourage and after a moment she straightened, licking her top lip and looking down at him.

Dan’l was clapping slowly. Evangeline looked over at him, his expression a mix of exasperation and a slow simmer of lust. He caught her eye and winked. She blushed and finished the beer. He leaned across the other woman he was with and began talking to Kelly and Maura.

Carly looked over at Evangeline, the evening had narrowed to the three of them. “He’s a good kisser, girlfriend. You should try, since, you know, you like kissing but Mark doesn’t.”  
Evangeline scowled, she felt as though Mark had given away a secret that somehow belonged to her, too.

“What?” Carly pouted. “Do you like to kiss or not?” She stepped sideways and was leaning down into Evangeline’s space.

Her mouth was glistening wet and Evangeline could only think of Jakob’s lips there. Carly moved in closer and Evangeline closed her eyes and felt Carly’s lips press against her own. She kissed her. Lingering in a delicious place between hard and soft.

Carly moved back slowly and Evangeline opened her eyes at the same speed of this withdrawal. They looked at each other.

“Well hello,” Carly whispered and Evangeline laughed low. “I think I’m going to sit here for a while.” She wriggled in next to her and pushed with her hip and Evangeline was pressed up against the side of Jakob, his arm hot behind her neck, across the span of her shoulders. “You should kiss him.” Carly said, with a jut of her chin. “Really.”

“Really?” Evangeline asked slyly, hiding a nervous edge to her voice.

Beside her Jakob repeated the word.

She turned to him. His eyes were open, that startling blue. He was watching her, almost wary, she thought and as she let her lids slide shut, his warm hand suddenly on the back of her neck, fingers reaching up into the French knot of her hair. And then his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her. She felt his other hand come up to her face and he tilted his head and opened his lips. She opened her eyes to look into the depths of his; open, still watching. She felt the experience of the proximity of his facial tattoo consume her drunken senses. The blackened eye holes, the jagged lines of the skull, the black inked nose.

The world had grown even smaller. Just the two of them. Peripherally she could hear the others talking and laughing. She could feel Carly’s gaze hot on her and Jakob. She imagined she could hear Mark snoring in her bed.

Jakob’s tongue was in her mouth, licking at her, her teeth, her tongue. She was overcome with the lustful need to push her body hard against the long, thin length of him. His hands were holding her in place, as though he knew, holding her away from him. He kissed out of her mouth slowly. He was in complete control and he broke the kiss by bending his head towards hers, his forehead against her forehead, his heated breath on her face. He turned and pressed his mouth against the corner of her lips and let his hands drop and she fell back against the sofa.

Carly was giggling beside her and took one of her hands between both of hers. “You love kissing!”

“I do. I love it.”

A half hour, one more bottle of wine. Dan’l nodded off, the other woman already asleep on his shoulder. Maura pulled Kelly to his feet and they left in a quiet round of goodbyes and promises to be in touch soon. Jim and Charlie stood in a tangle of suited legs and arms, hugging Evangeline repeatedly at the door, gushing about the sales and the show.

When she sat back down, Jakob had slumped against her. There was an inebriated unspoken permission for this. She and Carly moved further down the sofa so that his head was in her lap. She found herself tentatively stroking the side of his face, the curve of his ear, his neck while she talked with Carly. He was asleep in minutes under her fingers’ ministrations.

Then Dan’l woke himself and they were leaving. Evangeline stood wobbly, carefully lowering Jakob’s head to the couch cushion, walking the group to the door, saying good bye in hushed tones. Carly whispering something about a coffee date, she nodded assent.

She locked the front door, moved towards the bathroom and then stopped at the small linen closet for a blanket. She padded quietly back to the living area and tucked it around the sleeping skeleton. She stood looking down at him for a long time, the streetlights casting him in a strange light.

 

She was woken by Mark putting one knee up on the bed and nuzzling her ear with his mouth. “Hey, sleeping beauty, I’m leaving. I’m going to take Jakob wherever he needs to go.”

She cracked one eye open. “Is he awake?”

“Not yet, but he’s going to be shortly.”

“No. Let him sleep. I’ll drop him off on my way to the gym.”

“Not a good idea.”

She rolled over onto her back. “It’s okay. We drank too much and stayed up too late. What time is it?”

“It’s eight. I’ve got to get home and get showered and changed. You don’t want that guy sleeping on your couch, Evangeline. I can get him out of here.”

“And I’m telling you, really, that it’s okay. Good luck with your appointment. Call me, okay?”

He was angry. Shaking and nodding his head. And then he was gone.

She fell back to sleep, curled into the warm bed linens. Blanketed in the morning light she dreamed of a homeless dog who wanted tattoos of ham bones.

 

 

Another hour and she was awake, and dressed for the gym. Boiling eggs in the kitchen. Coffee was stronger than usual. Thick slices of artisan bread toasting. And she was up to the elbows in soapy dish water. She felt ridiculously domestic but it was calming and helping her to avoid focusing her hazy thoughts. She heard him get up from the couch, find the bathroom, and then he was standing awkwardly beside the kitchen bar.

“Sit down,” she said. “Soft-boiled eggs for breakfast.”

The chair scraped and she finished the dishes, turning, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Her head felt heavy, the murky vestiges of too much beer and the kiss. She forced herself to meet his opaque gaze.

“I don’t eat breakfast,” he said simply, looking back at her.

“You do today.” She smiled, relieved. She poured out two large mugs of coffee, opened the refrigerator and retrieved a pint of heavy cream.

He began nursing the coffee. “You got any sugar?

“No, sorry.” She raised a cocky eyebrow. “I could stick my finger in it for you.”

He startled, brows drawn fast and hard down over his eyes. “What?”

She blushed. “It’s a joke, Jakob.”

“Guess I don’t get it.”

She felt utterly embarrassed. “You know, like I’m so sweet, my finger, your coffee? Forget it.”

“Why does it sound dirty?”

“I guess it’s supposed to?”

He narrowed one eye, clearly thinking it through, and then he began to laugh. Uproariously. She had heard him laugh, seen him momentarily drop his protective shield before, but this was entirely new. She listened to him laugh, without pause or reservation. The genuine sound of it loud. A window inside her stuffy brain opened and fresh morning air poured in.

“Here.” She placed a plate of food in front of him, tossed down a cloth napkin, handed him a fork, then walked around and sat beside him with her own breakfast.

“It’s not a hangover breakfast unless it has bacon.”

She nodded. “Are you hung over?”

He forked the eggs and toast into his mouth, drank deeply until he finished the orange juice and then went back to his coffee. “You don’t get hung-over if you stay drunk.”

This surprised her.

“Where you going in that get-up?” he interrupted her thoughts.

“Not a fan of workout clothes?”

“Wasn’t sure what you called that. Workout clothes. Okay.”

“I’m going to the gym. I try to swim four or five times a week.” She hooked a thumb under the swimsuit strap inside her t-shirt and showed him. “And sometimes get in a yoga class. Do you work out?” She knew he did not and kicked herself for baiting him.

His eyes narrowed. He finished his breakfast, sopping up his plate with the last of the toast, washing it down the last of his coffee. It was a vigorous thing to watch. He stood and gathered the plate, glass, mug, and fork and walked around the counter to the sink. “Those other guys are really buffed out, huh.”

She nodded slowly, trying to puzzle this out.

“In the show, last night. All your friends are, well, they look like they’re really into, you know, pumping iron. Or whatever it’s called.”

She chose to ignore the mocking tone in his voice. “I think they are. Quite a bit. I actually met Mark at the gym last year.”

“Yeah, he’s always been-“ He trailed off leaving her to wonder what Mark had always been.

“You’ve known him longer than I have.”

He nodded. “Guess so.” He looked at her, head tilted. “You don’t have any ink?”

She hesitated.

“Tattoos?” he helped.

She smirked at the explanation. “No. I don’t.”

“Good. You should stay that way.”


	15. Chapter 15

The beginnings of the evening. Evangeline and her new-found friend, Carly were in a downtown watering hole that smelled of stale cigarette smoke, dimly lit and filthily carpeted, populated by a few broken people slouched over drinks and illegal ashtrays. The wrecked bartender was leaning on the far end of the bar playing cards with two old-timers.

They were decidedly overdressed and out of place but with casual postures that declared comfort with their surroundings. They were seated at the bar, turned towards one another in feminine curves of secrets told and shared, heads bent together. High heels hooked over the rungs of the bar stools, bare-legged. They had martinis and a small bowl of bar snacks of indeterminate age that they were taking turns picking at.

“He’s starting to feel his age, I think.” Evangeline said, a definitive definition in their discussion of men and relationships and Mark in particular. Carly wagged an eyebrow and Evangeline blushed slightly. “Not like that. He’s not even forty for god’s sake. I mean he’s rethinking the bachelor life, wanting to get seriously involved.”

“That makes sense.”

“I guess.” She scored an unbroken pretzel and popped it between her lips.

“Do you think he’s too old for you?”

“I don’t think about that at all. Unless he’s harping on it.”

“Social norm says an acceptable age gap is half your age plus seven. Let’s see, he’s what forty?”

Evangeline nodded. “Close enough.”

“So, that’s twenty seven and you are-“

“Twenty-eight.”

“There you go. Socially acceptable.”

“Barely. Maybe that’s why he gets so weird about his age. But honestly? The last thing on my mind is whether or not I’m socially acceptable.”

“You’re just not into him?”

“It’s not that either.”

Carly selected a swizzle stick out of a shot glass full of them on the bartender’s side of the bar and swirled it into her drink.

“I love your crazy nails,” Evangeline said.

Carly spread her fingers out wide on the bar top. “I’ll do yours. We should totally have a spa day. Manicures, pedicures. I could do something with your eyebrows, you know.”

“No one touches my feet and what the hell is wrong with my eyebrows?”

“Oooh, you’re one of those foot people, huh? Ticklish or squeamish?”

“I think squeamish. It makes my stomach turn over to have someone touch the balls of my feet.”

Carly nodded. “I’ll do some research on that. Could be your lungs or your thyroid.”

“Really? Can you read my future too?” Evangeline dramatically rolled her eyes.

“Not on your feet, silly. But hey, don’t take my word on it. Ten thousand years of Chinese medicine can’t be wrong, right?”

“What exactly is the issue with my eyebrows. We can’t all be glamour girls like you.”

“As if. You are girlie and you are gorgeous. But,” she drew the word out long, “I can give you that extra oomph.”

“Please.” Evangeline finished her drink, biting into the olive on the bottom and then grimacing and changing her mind. She spit it back into the glass. “Do I need that? Do I need oomph?”

Carly finished her drink and called down to the bartender, ordering two more of the same.

“I should be into him, shouldn’t I?”

Carly paid and tipped, sitting back on her bar stool, fingertip running along the rim of the glass.

Evangeline began to count points on her fingers. “He’s damned good-looking.”

Carly nodded. “Those tattoos.”

Evangeline smiled and nodded, another finger tapped off. “He’s built, god he’s got this great body. He’s kind. And a hard worker. He makes good money.”

Carly nodded, nodded, nodded. Evangeline folded her fingers back into her palm and sipped at the new drink. “These are not good martinis, baby,” she said and the other woman shrugged.  “I think he wants to get married.”

“To you?” Carly set her drink down with emphasis.

“No. I mean, I think he wants to be married. You know?”

“And you don’t.”

“No, not really. Not right now. Maybe not ever. I feel like there’s something I’m missing. Something I haven’t found yet. That there’s this voyage I need to take, or a door I need to open, or a path I need to get my ass on. I love Mark but-”

“But you’re not in love with him.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been,” she paused, and then emphasized her next words, “in love with anyone. Not really. In lust, sure. But love? I don’t know. You?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been in love. It never lasts that’s how I know it’s real.” She laughed. “I love Sue and I love Dan’l. But I don’t want to get married either.”

“I know. Marriage just doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with me, my life. I can’t envision myself as a wife. At all.”

“Welcome to the modern woman’s plight. We want to be in love but we don’t want to be tied to it. Men have been doing this for centuries. Why does it seem to make us so unhappy?”

“Why can’t we have it all? Now’s the time. Today is now.”

“Bumper sticker philosophies. What is it you want that you don’t have?”

“That’s part of the problem. I feel this huge feeling, in here,” she knuckled the space between her breasts, “that just wants. Wants something. But I can’t seem to find it.”

“What about this skeleton guy?”

Evangeline stared into her drink, tipping if from side to side, rolling the alcohol up against the edge. She shrugged.

“Obsessed,” Carly announced quietly.

“Maybe. Yeah.”

“Is he actually showing up for sessions now?”

She thought of Jakob’s haphazard response to her request for more photographing. “We’ve had a few sessions, yeah. He likes it and that’s what makes him such a great model. Well, one of the things that makes him so good for me.”

“You don’t really react to him the way everyone else does.”

“What do you mean?”

“Evangeline.”

“What?”

“You know I’m all for flying the freak flag,” Carly laughed, smiling jauntily, raising a wicked eyebrow. “But this, wow, I don’t know. How does he get around in the world, you know? Why would someone do that to their face? How does he live with this?”

“I know, I know. It’s extreme. I get that.” Evangeline sipped at her drink, Carly’s perceptive gaze on her face. “You think he’s crazy.”

“No, I didn’t say that. At all. I just wonder about him, the guy underneath. The person inside. I like tattoos as much as the next modern girl, but I just don’t see how he’s going to live his life out to its end. I look at him and get mind sore, you know?”

Evangeline nodded slowly, mulling over her belief that she was coming to know the human being beneath the skin-deep skeleton.

 “You don’t feel that way at all, do you?” Carly finished her drink, smacking her lips.

“Is that weird? Am I weird? Yes, I get that his life is not like other people’s lives. I see completely how he’s altered himself into a kind of disabled existence, but I don’t see it as crazy or negative. I see unexplored terrain every time I’m with him. Endless possibilities.”

“Really?”

The question was sincere and a bit awe-struck around the edges. Evangeline smiled and nodded slowly, her vision turned inwards.

“We should take him out.” Carly said this definitively, with a flirtatious finality.

“Take him out?”

“To the bars, you know, drinking, dancing on tabletops, that kind of thing. See how much game he has in him.”

A churning nervousness escalated her heartbeat as she considered the idea. Carly was nodding her head, biting her lower lip, her gaze filled with mischief. Finally, Evangeline smiled and nodded in agreement.

 


	16. Chapter 16

Working with a selective focus and softened split lighting, she was hoping to capture haunting glimmers of the skeleton edged with black darkness, muted shadows. She had given him a large piece of black velvet to wrap around his body. It was sumptuous and delectably soft, the plush material absorbing the light, calling it to itself and swallowing it, leaving his exposed skin white, between the inked bones and the colored roses. She arranged folds, pinning it around his naked hips, indicating how he should hold his hands. She walked away and looked, striding from one side of the studio to the other, squinting and tilting her head. He stood and pulled the excess train of fabric up over his shoulders, cape-like, and spread his arms, hanging his head, crossing his feet at the ankle, a pose of supplication or crucifixion. She stopped. It was graphic and angular and perfect.

“Yes,” she whispered and moved quickly to the Hasselblad on its tripod.

He rolled his head on his shoulders slowly, eyes closed, lips closed. The black velvet waterfalling from his grip, fading into the deep black background behind him, the black and grey ink slicing across his skin. She snapped and snapped and snapped and got to the end of her twelve exposures, watching him as she wound the film off the internal spool. She stepped sideways from the camera. She needed to fetch a fresh film back but his pose, his serenity, was compelling her.

She studied the amazing trompe-l’oeil affect Mark had perfectly rendered with the spine as seen from the front of Jakob’s body. Each vertebra was inked beneath the rib cage, so skillfully shaded that it appeared to be seen as though from the backside. Roses and buds spilled out from beneath the short ribs. It was a breathtaking affect. She walked toward him and he opened his eyes, raising his head. He dropped his arms, waiting.

“Shhhh,” she hushed him before he could speak. She lifted her hand and he flinched. She paused in her reaching. Slowly she lowered her hand and picked up an edge of the velvet, her cool fingers in the warm luxury of it, pressing it down against the shape of his shoulder, her fingers trembling.

“I need more film. That was perfect.” She turned and walked away.


	17. Chapter 17

Mark was standing in the studio, come to pick her up and take her out for a night of drinking and shooting pool at some bar or another. Evangeline came out of the bathroom, finger-brushing her hair, smoothing down the skirt of her mini-dress.

He was turning page after page of the work, the printed sheets stacked on her workspace countertop. “These are, well, they’re amazing.” His voice was unsure. “Aren’t they?”

Evangeline hesitated, words and emotions tumbling into her mouth. Instead, she said dismissively, “He’s easy to photograph.”

Mark looked up at her, and then slid his gaze sideways, away. “But he doesn’t really look like this, does he?”

 “What do you mean?” She narrowed her eyes, challenging him.

He shrugged. He was looking at Evangeline now and not the portraits. “What are you going to do with all of this work?”

“I haven’t really thought about that yet.”

“Then why are you taking all of these pictures?”

Evangeline reached across and picked up the top print. It was her current favorite. She tilted her head, looking at it, remembering the session more than focusing on the resultant image. She questioned herself out loud. “Because he’s letting me?”

 

 

The next morning, alone with the images, Evangeline looked through them slowly. It was impossible to see them with fresh eyes, from an unseen perspective. She fed her hungry gaze with them, felt how the photographs filled a place inside of her, just behind her lungs, how the images sated an artistic appetite. With great care, she tapped them back into an approximation of a book, a diary of sorts, a secret journal. Her long fingers brushing against the edges of the steadily growing stack, she bent closer and narrowed her eyes, softening her focus, staring at the image in the top photograph, trying to see beneath the skull.


	18. Chapter 18

“I don’t understand what the issue is, with Jakob, with the tattooing. My photography. You. All of it.”

He would not look up, the tattoo magazine with her photographs of his studio was in his lap. He was sitting on the edge of one of her sofas. Slowly he bent forward and dropped the magazine on the coffee table. She watched him flex his hands into fists.

“Mark.”

He stood and walked away from her, then detoured to the kitchen, slamming open the refrigerator and hunting out a bottle of beer. He looked back at her, over the bottle as he took a long drink. Slowly he returned, sitting heavily across from her.

“Thanks but no, I don’t want a beer.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Here we go. Acting like what? I’m asking you a question and if anyone is acting like anything it’s you.”

“What is the question?”

Evangeline pursed her lips, shaking her head slightly. She did not want to roll her eyes at him. She wanted to find a smooth passage into the conversation. “The question is a big one, what is the issue here?”

“The issue.” He drank deeply again. “The issue is that I don’t particularly like him. The issue is that I feel this really heavy responsibility about the tattoos he’s wearing. The issue is that I feel protective of the shop and the guys. And the issue is -” his voice had been steadily rising and now he was on his feet again. “The issue is that I can see you’re falling for him.”

She could feel the heat rising to her face, flushing her neck hot as it moved upwards. This was not the direction she thought she had wanted the conversation to take and yet as soon as the words had left his mouth she heard the small devil on her right shoulder laugh. This was exactly what she had been moving towards. She wanted someone to see Jakob as a possible love interest, and she wanted someone to speak it aloud, make it possible. She was overwhelmed with a bitter feeling of shame. She had pushed Mark into this place, forced him to give voice to something she could not speak aloud herself. She breathed in deeply. She forced the air to stay in her lungs, slowing her heartbeat a bit. She needed to move out of this conversation.

“Mark.” But he was wound up now.

Never a man to be cornered she could see the trapped look in his eyes; feel the tension radiating off his body, the primal preparation for tooth and claw. He was towering above her.  
“I don’t hear you denying it, Evangeline.”

“Why do you dislike him so much?”

“That has got nothing to do with why I might not want you fucking him.”

She recoiled. Then lowered her head, her hands were in her lap and she watched them shaking. His temper, the occasional aloofness he protected himself with had infuriated her for the half a year’s time they had spent together. But this pain was something entirely new. She felt cruel. She looked up and caught a lightning flash of expression on his face, a resigned hopelessness. She did not want to see the vulnerable parts of him, did not want to feel the weight of the weapon she held. She looked away.

“You’re right. This really has nothing to do with him.” Slowly she stood. She sucked on the insides of her lips, biting down hard to keep her mouth closed, her cutting words from escaping.


	19. Chapter 19

Disintegrating. It was a kind of letting go. A releasing of oneself and Jakob had come to relish it. He had spent the past three years or more holding and releasing, closing and opening, rising and descending. He knew his was a singular experience among his friends and acquaintances. The drugs and the drink reduced him. For the others it was different. They seemed to believe themselves travelers, fancy themselves as some sort of punk rock shamans. He would watch and listen to them in the before moments, the thought of the quest, the acquisition, the preparation. They would fill slowly with anticipation but he could not relish that, his memory hooked on the first moments of terror and panic before the comatose exhaustion he craved. For him, there was no wrestling with angels, it was simply a way to absolve, forgive, and dissolve. This was his addiction; he knew that in his heart. The promise of dissolution of his self.

Jakob stumbled out of the grotto of his bedroom, running a hand over the stubble he could feel growing across his shaved scalp, along the edges of his jaw. He could not be bothered. It was a random night in his random house and he was beginning to consider his life, his existence, also random. He was vibrating with the energy of the middle of the night and could feel a surprising emptiness of the house, but as he rounded the corner out of the hallway and into the front room, he startled. An aged hippie had materialized on the sofa. He watched the old man look up at him and respond with so little reaction, unfocused half-masted eyes, to his black-and-grey inked visage that he could not help but burst out laughing.

He tilted his head forward, the tattooed skull menacing, towards this stranger, in what he knew was an eerie pose in the dimly lit room.

“Hello,” the man said to him. “I was,” he hesitated, “warned about you. Told about this tattoo.”

“Warned, huh? Told? And who are you?” Jakob scanned the coffee table, fishing an unopened can of beer out of the debris scattered across its top and popped the pull-tab.

“We haven’t met.” The man stood and pressed a smoldering joint from his fingers to in-between his lips and extended a hand.

Jakob ignored it, finished the beer and tossed the empty into the hallway, back in the general direction of the kitchen. “Where is everyone?”

The man looked around. “Not here.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why are any of us here?”

Jakob rolled his eyes. “Spare me.” He walked to the television set, hunting out the remote on the cluttered TV stand, found it and thumbed it on. He returned to the sofa, sitting heavily.

The man remained standing, slouched and belly protruding.

Jakob put his bare feet up on the table, deliberately pushing over bottles and empty cans. He leaned forward and plucked a half-full bottle of generic vodka out of the trashed harvest and wedged it between his thighs. “You planning on sharing any of that?”

The man dragged deeply on the blunt, then handed it over, hacking and coughing. Jakob watched him dig into his pocket, producing a square of cloth. He unfolded it, covered his mouth and spit into it, folding it back over and returning it to his pants pocket. He turned and lowered himself back to the couch, wedged up against the arm, leaving a sparse half of foot of space between them.

“You sick?” Jakob asked.

“We’re all diseased.”

Jakob nodded, squinted at the wet end of the drugged cigarette and brought it to his lips.

Sometime later, the man was gone, the house still empty, the world perhaps grinding itself to a stop outside the door. He let his knees fall open, grabbed the bottle before it spilled and took the last swig. He wondered what time it was and for a long moment he considered getting up and walking across town to stand, a Shade, on the sidewalk outside of Evangeline’s door. Instead, he rose and staggered to his room. He fell backwards on the bed, crossing his feet at the ankles, spreading his arms wide so that his knuckles brushed the rolled edges of the naked mattress. He closed his eyes and felt the bed beneath him begin to spin, it was a widdershins movement, matching the earth on its axis. He wanted to feel a g-force acceleration, wanted the flesh of his body opened like an envelope. He was pulled into the vortex.


	20. Chapter 20

Jakob missed a portrait session. And the fresh cow heart and mason jar full of pig blood that she had bought from the local butchers sat in her refrigerator as some sort of testament to how crazy her obsession with him had become.

Evangeline looked at the calendar on her desktop computer, his name in the otherwise empty square of time. The day had been kept clear for him, only him and she had waited, but more than that, she had anticipated. Her latest envisioning of photographing him, heart in hand, dripping blood, filled her with a small humiliation.

It had been a month since the opening night of the show. Since, she closed her eyes looking at the remnants of memory, the kiss. Over a week since she and Mark had begun gathering up the broken bits of their relationship so that it could be tossed it away like garbage. She was paying the price for the time she wanted to spend with the skeleton.

She thought of him almost constantly now, going places in her mind with him, his look, and his overwhelming yet strangely subtle presence. She had played their brief kiss over and over in her skull theater until the film had disintegrated, dissolved. She mourned the loss of the body memory rushing at her, of his mouth, the tattooed skull, his hand on the back of her neck.

She had seen Carly, coffee dates, pool played at one bar, shuffle board at another, they even had lunched several times together. In her darker moments Evangeline wondered if it was because she enjoyed her company, wanted to build a new friendship, or because Carly had borne witness.

And the hours she wasn’t working, she was planning out the details of each photo session, roughing in the edges of the time she had with him, time together. Alone. Numerous sheets of paper with sketches, ideas, thoughts, notes, poses becoming wallpaper of her obsession. Tacked up on the cork wall of the studio. She had pored over countless websites, studying lighting diagrams, collecting images of costuming. She had dipped into vintage theatre stills and stolen from a small handful of historical art pieces. He had become a decadent feast for her starved muse.

Before each scheduled session, she found herself counting time, waiting with the turned hourglass, the imminent last hour always pricking her. And then he would arrive like a gift.

But he missed the latest appointment and a day dragged by. A second day passed. She left the heart on the back stoop for the feral tomcats, slopped the blood into the dirt. On the third day, she grew furious. And then she became ridiculously forlorn; feeling forsaken.

She phoned Mark. “Have you happened to see Jakob?”

“Nope.”

Silence and he wielded it as though it were fighting words. She wanted to hang up.

“Okay.”

She called Carly. “You want to come out to the west side with me, look for Jakob. He missed a session and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Sure. You don’t have his phone number?”

“I don’t think he has a phone. But I took him home after that night here, after the show. I know where he lives.”

“Let’s do it.”

 

 

The street was dingy and dirty in the daylight promising menace and danger after dark. Carly curled her lip up as they turned onto a smaller street, no sidewalks, curbs cluttered with broken down vehicles. One house had two motorcycles on the porch and what looked like a blanket in place of a front door.

“Really?” Carly asked and tapped her cigarette ash outside the window of the slow-moving car.

“I know. It’s terrible, isn’t it? There’s the house.” Evangeline pointed up ahead.

“Looks pretty quiet.”

She pulled into an open space in front of the house next door and keyed off the car. Looking at the street through the windshield. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s your deal. Your call.”

Evangeline glanced at Carly who was looking out her window at the house they were parked in front of. She followed her gaze. It was boarded up and sagging on its foundations. The front yard riotous and overgrown and yet the bones of forgotten landscaping could be viewed through the grass and debris. Carly turned her head slowly, looking back at her, tipping her face into a shocked expression.

“We’ll just knock on the door and see,” Evangeline said, hoping she sounded reassuring.

“It’ll be an adventure! What are we waiting for?” Carly laughed.

They walked, shoulder to shoulder, through the opening in the fence, up the cracked cement walkway and onto the stoop. Carly nodded encouragingly and Evangeline knocked. And then knocked again. Somewhere in one of the backyards, dogs began barking.

The door opened. It was the girl who had come to the first photo shoot and then opening night. Evangeline felt her heart sink, dark waves crashing around her. “Hi.”

“Hi,” the girl said, looking out at the street and then at each one of the women.

“I don’t know if you remember me, we’re looking for Jakob. He had an appointment at my studio and he didn’t show up.”

“So?”

Evangeline was silenced by this.

Carly spoke, “So we’re looking for him.”

The girl shrugged. “I’ll tell him you came by. He’s sick. He’s asleep.”

“He’s sick?” Evangeline asked, too loud, too demanding. “Can you tell him now? We’ll wait.”

“He don’t like being woke up.”

From inside the house a male voice shouted. “Either let them in or shut the door, Tami.”

The girl pulled a face, but opened the door and motioned them inside. Carly stepped boldly through and Evangeline followed. She was fearful and looked around warily. The house was dark, curtains drawn, a television turned on without sound in the corner. Two people were on the couch and she thought she recognized both from the night of the opening. The coffee table in front of them was a micro horror show of ruined lives and drug addiction.

The man looked at them, visibly dismissed them from his reality and then pointed to the hallway. “First door on the left.”

“He ain’t going to like you going back there,” the girl said but Carly was already walking and Evangeline followed quickly. The house smelled badly, a quick glance into the kitchen proved disgusting.

The first door on the left was cracked open and Carly knocked and pushed gently at it. Inside, the air was stifling with the smell of unclean, a mattress was on the floor, and Jakob was curled on it, facing the door. The tattooed head, shockingly unshaved and bare on the dirty pillow, the sloppy sweatshirt and the threadbare blanket were almost more than Evangeline could take in, the visual impact of it a sledgehammer to her head.

His eyes opened slowly and she watched myriad emotions pass through them, a dazedness that became awareness, then confusion, and finally the dull look of discontent. He closed his eyes again.

“Man, this is really uncool,” Carly said and moved aside to let Evangeline walk in.

She took a deep breath. She understood the scene instantly and weighed the options in her mind before squatting down beside the mattress, beside the still form.

He opened his eyes again.

“Jakob?” she asked softly. He looked up at her and she lifted her hand. He flinched, and she stilled her movement as though he were an injured animal, then gently placed her hand on his shoulder. He was so thin. But she could feel the heat of his skin under the fabric of his sweatshirt. “Are you okay?”

He kept his gaze locked to hers.

“Does he look okay, Evangeline?” Carly asked behind her. “I’m going to guess he’s not okay. At least not until his next fix.”

She shushed her over her shoulder. “Carly, he’s sick.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She petted him through the shirt then lifted the back of her hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up. You want to get out of here?”

His steady gaze remained unbroken and a small furtiveness flickered, then shone in the light eyes.

“You want to come back to my place? I’ll take care of you.”

His eyes narrowed.

“He don’t need to go anywhere with you.” The girl was in the doorway. “I’m taking care of him. He don’t need anything. You two should just split.”

And still Jakob kept his eyes focused on her. She nodded and straightened to a stand. “C’mon,” she said and offered her hand.

Slowly he reached up and took it, rolling slightly onto his back, and then he was standing, tottering on his feet, and Evangeline waited, holding onto his hand. Suddenly his fingers curled around hers, a silent signal and she squeezed back. He shook his hand free and grabbed a gym bag and slowly began stuffing various lumps of clothing into it. Then he motioned them to go in front of him. They walked purposefully back down the hallway and out of the horrid gloom and into the front yard. Behind them he was still inside the house, his voice was a low murmur and Carly tapped a cigarette out of the pack in her purse, lit one and spoke through the smoke.

“This might take a while.”

But it didn’t, he was out the door, bag in hand, hood of the sweatshirt pulled up over his head, muttering.

“Surprise, surprise,” Carly said and the three walked out the yard and towards the car.

He climbed into the back seat and folded himself against the far door, behind Evangeline, leaned his forehead against the glass and all the way home she watched him in the rearview as he watched the world flash past.

 

 

In her house he stood, swaying, anchored in the middle of the floor. She disappeared down the short hallway and returned with bedding and made up one of the couches. He walked over to it, toed off his battered sneakers and sat heavily, head in his hands.

“You really are sick, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Lay down, I’ll get you something to eat and drink.”

He lowered himself to the makeshift bed.

In the kitchen she began scrambling eggs and pouring juice. Carly was leaning against the counter, her back to the front room. “He’s not a stray puppy.”

“I know that.”

Carly shrugged. “Mark’s going to flip out.”

Evangeline paused from stirring the eggs. “Mark’s already flipped out. I think it’s just a matter of time.” She shook the pan vigorously by the handle.

“Moving back on the market. Hmmm….”

“Go for it, Carly.”

“For you or for him?”

Evangeline turned a bittersweet gaze on her new friend. “You’re incorrigible.”

“So, I’ve been told. But never with quite that tone of voice. Is there enough for all of us?” She indicated the eggs. “I’ll make toast.” She leaned into Evangeline. “I want to be friends.”

Evangeline hugged her tightly, feeling how solid she was. “I do, too, Carly. I need a friend right now.”

They walked back into the front room, juggling plates and glasses. Jakob was watching them and Evangeline suddenly wondered how much of their quiet conversation he could have overheard.

She realized that he hadn’t seen Carly since the night of the after-show party when they both had kissed him. She blushed hot and her stomach clenched.

 

 

The rest of the first day stretched out, long hours where she could only watch helplessly as he sweated himself awake and then fought back into sleep. The bedding was a tangled mess around his body, between his legs, circling his torso. He was wearing a t-shirt that boldly declared –  _This Body Will Be A Corpse_. And a ragged pair of sweat pants hacked off knee-length. One of his lower legs was tattooed and the other was strangely un-inked.

She fed him aspirin, and forced liquids on him. She made him soup when evening fell and then relaxed when he finally found a restful sleep.

Her laptop kept her company late into the night. She spent long moments looking at him, a glance becoming a slow inspection, studying the shape of him. Following the angles and bends of the parts of his body she could see with her hot gaze. Between his head and shoulders, the underside of his jaw, the aching curve of his jugular. The insides of his elbow hinges, the curling of his fingers into his palms, the masculine length and shape of his thumbs. The long feet, the rounded calf muscles, the bony ankles. All still so human beneath the inked bones and shaded roses. On her digital film, she knew him intimately. She had become his electronic voyeur, but she had not had the leisure to study him in the flesh as it were, the glass of the camera keeping her separated from him. Now he was present in body and the obsessive camera set aside. She watched him while he slept.

 

 

She woke hours later, uncomfortable, on the sofa, the lights in the kitchen still on and when she remembered where she was, why she was there, she glanced across and he was watching her. She startled violently, the laptop falling to the floor, the sound ricocheting inside of her. He turned away, rolling onto his back, and then again onto his shoulder, into the sofa, pulling the bedding higher, curling his body closed. She stood, shaken and uncertain, walked to her bedroom and crawled into bed, mimicking his posture, waiting for sleep. Her ears ached from listening into the darkness. Finally she rose, padding noiselessly to the bedroom door and turned the lock with the precision silence of a safe-cracker. Still sleep eluded her.

 

 

The next day was more of the same.

Evangeline set the drinking glass on the floor beside the couch, the straw twirling away. He reached a long arm down to pick it up and sipped and pulled a face.

“What’s this?”

She frowned at him. “Flat ginger ale, right? You know, what your mom makes you drink when you’re little and you get sick.”

“Someone made you drink this when you were little and sick? Surprised you ever got better.”

“Funny. Your mother didn’t give you flat ginger ale when you were sick?” His eyes deadened and she sat down on the couch opposite. “No?”

“No.”

Silence settled between them.

He shrugged and tipped the glass up to his lips, pulling the straw out, and drank deeply. “You don’t have a TV?”

She shook her head. “I don’t usually have time for it. Are you getting bored?”

He looked up at her, and then pulled his body into a seated position. “Not yet. I’ve been out of it, huh? I do watch a lot of TV, though. When do you work?”

“I canceled several appointments I had for today, but tomorrow I’ll have clients in here.”

“You didn’t have to do that. Thanks for letting me crash. I’ll take off. Can I use your cell?”

“What? No. You’re not going anywhere. Until you’re better. I don’t mind, at all, taking care of you. You are sick.” She emphasized the word, the verb of it.

“Not a junkie like your friend thinks?”

She looked at him. “Is that a joke? I know you’re sick. You’ve got a fever. You look sick.”

“Really? I look sick?”

“Are you messing with me?” She stood and walked over to him, bringing her hand down to his forehead. He flinched. Again. But she was getting used to that. The back of her hand felt cool against his skin. “Still hot. And what’s with the flinching? Someone hit you when you were a kid?” She sat back down on the other sofa. “Finish that ginger ale.”

“You’re like a boss. A kidnapping boss.”

“Sorry. You’re right. I can get bossy. You can go home if you want.” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and held it out to him. “There. If you want to call a ride. I could drive you, too.” She looked at him, looked down at the phone. “Or you can stay.” He was watching her. She could feel the dramatic shift in her emotions. “Do you think I kidnapped you? You came without a fight.”

“I was scared of you.” Her brows drew together and he laughed. The sound was gentle and then became a cough. “I’m joking. Evangeline, I’m joking. Yeah, you were a crazy angel of mercy. I wanted to go with you. Really.” He had covered his mouth, coughing into his fist.

“Do you want me to look at your throat? Do you think you might have strep?”

“I hope not. What’s strep?”

“Strep throat? It’s not good. We’d have to get you to a doc-in-the-box. Here.” She tapped on the cell phone’s flashlight app. She stood in front of him, leaning down and he tipped his head back, opening his mouth wide, slitting his eyes nearly closed.

She felt like a debauched nurse. She could see the flattened indention of his philtrum, wanted to press the pad of her finger into it, the way his lips were drawn across his large teeth, the intimacy of his tongue. His breath smelled of soda and sleep. She shone the light into his mouth, seeking out his tonsils, spying on his molars. She reached down for his jaw, finger and thumb encouraging his face to a better angle, the light now shining deep in his throat. She moved the phone back and reluctantly let her hand fall away. He opened his eyes, licking his lips shut.

“All clear,” she said softly. “You’re good.”

“No cavities?”

Her hand was shaking. She set the phone down on the coffee table. “Can I take your picture?”

He narrowed his eyes, settling himself down to prone, punching a pillow into shape behind his head. “Thought you said I looked sick. Or is that why you want to?”

She was quiet.

“I don’t care. Take it.” He finished the drink and leaned over to set the empty glass on the coffee table. “Take whatever you want.”

She smiled and picked up the glass, walking back into the kitchen, filling it again and returning it to the coffee table. Then she turned and walked down the length of the loft into the studio. She took the camera battery out of the charger, the camera body heavy in her hand. She picked a lens, and began assembling her equipment. She thought of the vocabulary of photography, considering the slang of photographing someone. She was taking. She wanted to take and take and take. From him.

 

 

It was the evening of the third day. Her patient had made leaps and bounds towards good health. She credited herself, congratulating her inner Florence Nightingale, but wondered at her motivation. She recognized the part of her that was crushing on him, it was an undeniable attraction, but now that she had the object of her fascination in her house, on her sofa, filling her days, she found herself on a new plain, an unrecognizable horizon stretching away in front of her. He had showered and shaved, and run to the store while she worked in her studio with a newborn portrait and an engagement session. He had purposefully, instinctively, made himself scarce throughout the day.

The last clients could be heard out on the street, beyond the closed front door, starting their vehicle, leaving.

She turned back to the room. He was standing, watching her, blankets folded and stacked on one of the sofas, duffel bag at his feet, hands deep in the front pockets of the hoodie.

“What are you doing?” she asked, surprising herself with a pleading tone.

He smiled. “I got to go. Thanks for everything. Really. It was great. You’re great.”

“No, no. Let me feed you. Aren’t you hungry? What do you want?”

He pulled his hands out of the pockets, held them up to her, palm forward. “I have to go. I’m not hungry.”

“Can I drive you then?”

He shook his head, reaching down for the duffel. “I like to walk.”

“Walk? It’s like a gazillion blocks. You can’t walk.”

He approached her, lifting his free arm. “Evangeline.”

“Jakob.” Emotions were tumbling inside her head, clattering down into labyrinth inside her body. She felt his hand on her shoulder, pulling her into a hug, and she moved against him, sliding her arms around him. He was one-arm holding her but she pressed closer, tighter. He responded slowly, and for a long moment they held one another.

He rocked her gently then lowered his arm and moved past her to the door, pulling it open, turning slightly and tipping his head towards her, winking and smiling and leaving.


	21. Chapter 21

“You know I don’t like you to come over here. You know I don’t like that.”

He nodded to himself, looking at his mother. She had her eyes covered with a stained sleep mask. “I know. But Tami said you called her. You’re sick?” Beside him, Tami murmured a quiet wordless sound.

“Did anyone see you come in? See you out front?”

“What’s wrong?" He asked her. "Are you sick? You don’t look like you’re taking care of yourself.” He glanced around the single-wide, the disastrous kitchen, the unswept floor, the unmade bed through the door at the far end of the cramped quarters, the small stiff sofa she was reclining on in the main living space. He reached behind him and turned down the volume on the television. Tami looked at him with one eyebrow raised and he indicated the sink to her. She began to move dishes onto the counter, stacking them.

“Who’s that, who’s that with you? Is that Tami?”

“It’s me Miss Thomas. I’m just going to wash up some of these dishes.”

“We’re going to fix you something to eat.” Jakob had begun to move magazines and papers on the table into a stack. The other half the table-top was covered with amber pharmaceutical bottles.

“I can’t eat. It just comes right back up. Nothing stays down.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Is it like the flu? I just had the flu.”

“No!” She barked at him. “It’s my insides.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “Is that what all this is for?” He waved an impatient hand over the prescription bottles. “All these meds and scrips?” He reached for one of the plastic containers, turning it in his hand, reading the computerized print. It was a foreign language to him and he didn’t recognize the patient’s name.

Without warning she began to cry, messily, turning her face into the bed pillow on the built-in couch she was lying on.

“Mom.”

“I wish Jonah were here. Why isn’t Jonah here?”

Tami turned off the faucet and rubbed the water off her hands, then finished the job on the edges of her t-shirt. She lowered herself to the sofa and put her hand on the woman’s bone-thin shoulder. She shushed her. The woman reached up and took her hand tightly in her skeletal fingers and held on.

Jakob watched this and turned away, walking the few steps to the refrigerator and opened it, swallowing hard around the taste of bitter anger in his mouth. He reached into a case of soda and pulled out a can. He tapped the top with his knuckle then popped the tab. He searched out a glass from the mound of dishware and wiped at it with a cloth.

“Here. Drink this.”

She held up one hand and he pushed the glass into it and she straightened and sat up. Tami moved to accommodate her, their fingers still twined. She sipped it and grimaced. Suddenly, she lurched to her feet, reaching blindly for the walls, the corners, guiding herself into the small bathroom.

He listened to her vomit and watched Tami study her own hands in her lap.

She returned, still masked, still feeling her way blindly. She kicked over the glass where she had set it on the floor, soda splashed the length of the trailer.

“Just go, please. I feel so empty.”

“Here, Miss Thomas, here. Let me fix you something. You don’t have to but you can try to eat it.” Tami was bustling now, tucking a ratty comforter around the woman’s knees, indicating to Jakob that he mop up the spill. She plumped a pillow and pressed it beneath the woman’s head, smoothing the tangled hair out of her face. The woman’s hand came up and held the mask in place. She sighed under Tami’s ministrations and the sound was contented.

“Alright, I will try something. Something light, you know, so I can keep it down, maybe take my medication. I know you can cook, honey. I don’t have much here, though. You’re a good girl. Are you still cooking down at the diner?”

“Yeah, kinda. Al cut my hours, but that’s okay. Let me see what you have. Here’s another glass of soda.”

Jakob sat heavily at the small melamine table, wedging his knees underneath. He used his fingernails to scrape at the grease and dust along the sharp edge. He looked down at the filth beneath his nails, rubbed at his jeans, then pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his hoodie pocket.

“Where’s my menthols?” from the sofa bed.

Jakob spied the pack in the detritus of the table top and handed them to Tami.

“Thank you,” she said to the girl when she placed a cigarette and a lighter in her open hand. “Can’t take this off,” she said, touching the edge of the sleep mask, lit cigarette between her fingers. “Migraine.”

Jakob rubbed the length of his brow bone, turning his face to look out into the deep twilight. The dark was pulling him, calling him. He closed his eyes and imagined his mother’s home surrounded by uncarved headstones, flat empty marbles waiting for inscriptions. The trailer park was a dead place to him, a place before death. Behind him, he listened to the two women talk, their voices dissonant, muted, and inharmonic. He wanted them to be quiet. He bit his tongue.

“He’s got a new girl. Some photographer. I don’t know. She’s a right bitch. Stuck up.”

“Jakob?” his mother called to him, her voice menacing.

He stood, dropped the half-smoked cigarette into the sink of water. It sizzled. He slammed out of the trailer, the door hitting the outside wall and banging back into its aluminum jamb. He stood on the cement stoop, looking up into the muted sky above. He felt as though the two women were devouring him; sucking the flesh off his bones, twirling the wet white solidness of his skeleton between their lips, faces slick with marrowed grease. He braced his hands at the back of his neck, pulling his head forward, biting the inside of his cheek to the point of eye-burning pain. He melted away into the night.


	22. Chapter 22

She had begun dreaming of him. Gasping awake from endless walks across plains of vast deserts, the dream air dry with a suffocating aridity. The dreams always ending in the same sea of bone-white sand with her following him across the dead waves.

In the dreams, he took the shape of her animus, but still clothed in the skin of the tattooed skeleton. In one dream he was a jester, taunting her in a court of masked revelers, she mask-less and abashed. In another he was her newborn babe, suckling at her breast, her joy becoming grief when she was told she was nursing a stillborn. She dreamed he was tattooing her with a feathered quill, the scratching of the tip erotic as he drew it across her virgin skin. In dreams he wore a crown of stars, a crown of thorns, a May crown of flowers. In one dream from which she woke panting with lust, he was horned and she had held the velvet, living bone in her hand.

Every night he would appear and her mornings became haunted by his visitations.

 

 

 

Days of on and off again sessions. Working with him, in the studio, in various places around town. He would appear if she asked, alone now, and work for hours at her whim, her fancy.

She became a contemporary surrealist, borrowing images from the dreams and photographing him in symbol and metaphor. The digital canvas was hers to manipulate, the fluidity of it occupying her late into the night for hours of time she chose to spend alone and intent.

 


	23. Chapter 23

She called Emma, Jack’s girlfriend. She was a florist and she owned a flower shop. Evangeline told her what she needed and was invited out to the small flower farm. It was a beautiful late-Spring morning and she took Jakob.  They traveled to the edges of the suburban boundary of the town, leaving downtown, mid-town, inch-fill housing, entering the older suburbs.

“This is how families on TV live,” Jakob said. His voice a bit mocking, a bit observant, as though he were informing her.

She laughed. “Yep. Guess you didn’t grow up in suburbia?”

“No.”

She waited. He was quiet. “Me neither.” She began. “We lived in a gated community, until,” she paused, he looked over at her, “until my mother died. Then we moved. But it was to another gated community.”

“Rich.”

“I guess. How about you?”

“Me?” he asked.

“Who else?”

“Let’s see, my mom didn’t want to deal with a kid, so I got shuttled between my grandfather and my great-grandmother for a while. They both lived in the kind of place where kids aren't allowed. My great grandma lived in a mobile home park." He reached down and flipped open the glove box, open, shut, open shut. "But something happened. I went into foster care and then a group home. Out in the country. Those places are always out in the sticks. I moved downtown as soon as I could. Got out on my own, you know.”

“Foster care?”

He shrugged. “My grandfather didn’t want to give me up, but the state took me after my great-grandma died. My grandpa’s wife was happy about that, though.”

“That sounds sad. What happened?” She saw him stiffen out of her peripheral vision. She put a quick hand on the console between them. She wanted to touch his thigh, but stopped herself. “You don’t have to tell me.” Her fingers drummed.

“It’s kind of a crazy story. I used to spend weekends at my great-grandma’s trailer. And one weekend - hey can I smoke in your car?”

“Roll down the window.”

The energy between them had shifted. She wanted to tell him to forget it, he didn’t have to explain things to her, but she realized she really wanted to know. Wanted to listen, wanted to hear him tell his story.

“And?” The cellphone's map app beeped, they were almost to Emma’s house.

“Well, she died.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No, yeah, I mean, she died when I was there. In her sleep, I guess. I couldn’t wake her up. I didn’t know what to do. I had to wait until my grandpa came the next day to pick me up.”

Words left her, in the same way that the wind was catching the smoke from his cigarette and whisking it away. She looked down at the map on the phone screen and slowed, then turned into a long driveway.  “Jakob.”

“I know. It’s crazy. I was six years old. I watched tv the whole time, and ate a box of cereal. And I cried when she wouldn’t wake up.”

She parked, her hands were shaking. She turned to face him but he opened the door and stood quickly. Stretching himself tall on his toes, hands over his head. Sunglasses on.

Emma walked out from behind a small building, pulling her gardening gloves off and stuffing them into a large pocket in the heavy canvas garden apron she was wearing.

“These gardens are amazing.” Evangeline called to her as she climbed out of the car. She was overwhelmed with emotion. She turned her focus to the physical impact of the flower farm. Color was blooming far and wide on the large lot. She slid her gaze over the roof of the car to Jakob standing on the far side, but he was unreadable. She turned and hugged Emma hello.

“My father was the one who planted all of this,” Emma said, “built the greenhouse, the shop, created the business.”

“I’m amazed. And it’s in the heart of suburbia! Well,” she smiled, “1970’s suburbia, I guess. None of those new ticky tacky boxes out here.”

“No,” Emma laughed. “My parents bought this house from the man who was subdividing his farm. They wanted the acreage but they didn’t want to move out to the country. It’s the biggest lot here. Almost an acre.”

“Do your parents live here, too?”

“No. My mother died when I was little and my father passed away two years ago.”

Evangeline said, "I'm sorry," and she was and she felt deeply apologetic. She wondered how the morning had become a memory of the dead. On the other side of the car Jakob pushed himself off from the hood where he’d been leaning and began walking towards the immaculate rows of long-stemmed rose bushes nearest the driveway. She watched him slouch away, hands deep in his hoodie pockets.

“Me, too. I don’t really like to talk about it at all.” She clapped her hands softly together. “So you want roses?”

“I do.” Evangeline nodded. “I’ve got an idea for a shoot with Jakob.”

“You’re working with him a lot now.”

She looked at the other woman. She wanted desperately to talk about Jakob, her feelings, the relationship that was festering like a thorn. But she felt as though she were walking a very narrow ledge between an impossible height and a staggering drop. “I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s one thing, but Emma, he’s this other thing. I’m just completely-“ she trailed off.

Emma smiled. “I can tell.”

“Really?” She pulled a face, dropping her shoulders. “It feels like this huge secret but I want to just shout out his name to everyone I meet.”

“Does he know?”

She shook her head quickly. “I don’t think so. We haven’t talked about it. Mark knows, well, I guess he knows something.” She looked over at Emma then at Jakob’s back as he moved down another row of flowers. “We’re not in a good place. He says I’m crazy and I’ll be sorry. He has a strange relationship with him. Has Jack said anything?”

“Not really. Just that they could get it finished. Most of it is dependent on Mark, his time. But you know Jack is doing the roses and a lot of shading and he can’t do that until Mark inks his part.”

“I wonder how many sessions they have left.”

“He’s not paying them?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “I paid both of them out of the sales from that last show. They wouldn’t take it at first, but I said they had to. I mean, I’m the one who is suggesting they finish it, for Mark to finish. You know?”

“That seems like a pretty heavy responsibility.”

“Paying for his ink?”

“No, encouraging it.”

 

“I have to ask you something.” She was trying to find a casual tone, usher it out of her vocal cords. They were seated in her car, parked in front of his house.

She turned in the seat, facing him, and recognized his requisite flash of protective alertness and then the dimming of the hot light in his gaze.

“Sure,” he answered her. “Fire.”

“Do you want to finish the work? Am I pressuring you?”

“Pressuring me? How’s that?”

She winced as the realization that his tattoos had nothing to do with her hit her like a fist. “You’re right. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” She had not told him that she had paid Mark and Jack for the last session.

“You really love it, don’t you?” He spread both hands out in front of him, turning them slowly, flexing into fists, he turned them palm-side up where his flesh was shockingly ink-free.  
She quieted, mute with her truth. She did love the skeleton. Finally, she asked, “Don’t you?”

“I don’t really think about it anymore. I mean, I do love it. It’s me. And it’s almost done now, isn’t it? It’ll happen when it happens. The money was gone after a few years. I put down a big deposit.”

“You paid ahead of time?”

“Yeah, Mark insisted. I had,” he paused and looked over her shoulder, his eyes unfocused, “I had some money somebody left me when they died. And I just gave it all to him. Guess he wanted to know I was serious.”

“Jakob, how much?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s gone now. I don’t even know how much all of this would cost if you totaled up the hours. He’s been working on credit I guess, maybe he thinks I’m good for it or maybe he just wants to be done with it.”

“And it is what you wanted?” She asked this quietly.

She saw him shift to a defensive position and she regretted her question. “What do you think?” he asked.

She believed she could hear a simmering challenge beneath his words. She realized that she was indicating a black place which could never ever be navigated. She wondered how hard he had to work to keep himself from descending into dark questions that could not be answered. “I hope so. I hope it is,” she said, stumbling away from the confrontation.

“Yeah, of course it is,” he was sneering, turning his face away.

 


	24. Chapter 24

Evangeline was staring out the bank of glass windows at the back of the loft but her gaze was inward, deliberating. Mark was seated on one of the sofas behind her, slowly turning a bottle of beer between his palms, balancing it on his knee. She moved back towards the room. They were discussing Jakob.

“You told me that he knew what he wanted. The first time he came in, you said he already knew.”

“Did I say that?” He looked away. “He came in with an idea.”

“You said he already knew what he wanted. That’s different than an idea. An idea that became-“

“I know what it became.” Mark cut her off.

“You, you took that small idea, and you-“ She broke off, her voice quivering. “I don’t know what you did. I don’t know how you did it. I can imagine. It takes a bit of work to imagine something so colossally huge but if I work at it a bit I can imagine what happened. How it happened.”

 “You’re like a psychic detective?” he said quietly.

“This isn’t a joke. This is people’s lives.” She walked closer to him and her proximity forced him to look up, meet her gaze. “I can’t imagine the why, though. I’m not getting the why.”

“Don’t put this on me.”

She pressed on. “No?”

He would not look at her, she could feel a tension radiating off his body, see it in the line of his shoulders, the fisted hands on his thighs. She knew she was on borrowed time, that he would stand and leave, not look back, not return, wiping the space between them clear. There would be nothing left, not even good memories.

 “He wanted this. From the beginning. He wanted it. He has it now and I think he’s okay with it.” He stood and stepped away from her.

“He didn’t know what he wanted.”

“Is that what he told you?” He looked at her, his eyes dark with emotion. She shook her head and he continued. “You’re not giving him enough credit. He knew what he wanted.”

“He certainly could not have comprehended what it became, what it is.”

“I didn’t force it on him, if that’s what you’re saying or what you believe. He said yes. The entire way he said yes. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t on drugs and he wasn’t under my evil mind control.”

She looked at him, recognizing the tightness in his body, the control of his posture through his emotions. She took a deep breath. “You told me once that you don’t do racist tattoos, gang ink, underage kids, drunk girls, things that would put you in a category you don’t want to be put into. But this, this is a category all of its own, isn’t it? A group of one and the tattoo artist who created it.”

“He’s happy with it. I know he’s happy with it.” He inclined his head with an unasked question.

“But, you’re not happy with it. That’s pretty obvious. Mark, you’re not happy.”

 “Oh, is this about me? Really?”

“This isn’t about a misspelled name or a bad line.”

He looked at her, his expression splitting between anger and sadness. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, is that what they say? You have no idea what this is or what it isn’t. You don’t know what you think you know.”

“Maybe. You might be right. I do know that you can’t keep acting like this is nothing. Not anymore.”

“I never said it was nothing. This is not about you. It’s not even about you and him.”

“This is a one-of-a-kind situation. You’re going to have to make it up as you go along. I think you need to own it.”

“Own it? Please,” he held up a hand, the universal symbol for stop, “keep your psycho-babble to yourself. I own everything that belongs to me.” He stood. “If you’re asking me to lay myself open so you can dig around inside my guts, I’m not going to do that.  I’m not going to bleed for you anymore. I’m not going to confess if that’s what you’re looking for. I’ve already said more than I would because-“

She waited.

“Because it’s you asking. But this conversation is over now.” He laughed, and the sound was brittle and sharp and it cut her. “You don’t see him slamming me like this. If he’s got a problem, or a question, or needs a fucking hug, then he knows where I am. What is it to you, really? I keep asking but I don’t hear you answering. You’re getting everything you wanted out of that tattoo.”

He looked across at her, his face expressionless, smoothed into a granite approximation of himself. He nodded with a great deliberation and walked past her, bumping the coffee table slightly ajar as he maneuvered to avoid her, moving between the sofas, across the floor and out the door. She followed at a distance. On the stoop he looked down at the beer in his hand, finished it in one fluid tip to his lips. In a movement of controlled fury he turned and threw the bottle across the street, towards the vacant lot. His aim was perfect. He hit a metal fence post and the glass exploded with the sound of a sniper’s shot.

 


	25. Chapter 25

Years of the black-and-grey ink fading into his skin, becoming the only flesh he recognized. He could stand for hours in the dimly-lit bathroom and study his face. But when he remembered the face before the tattoo, he could not flinch away from the memory of the tattoo. The acquiring of the skull. He felt he had considered it long and hard and deep and wide and during a session on his left arm he asked, his expression held cautiously open, if Mark would tattoo his face.

He was told no in the most definitive of ways. Simply that he would not. There was no hesitation, no thought-filled pause, no considering of the idea at all. He had looked up from the work he was doing on Jakob’s upper arm, the humerus, shading, rounded bone ends, and articulation of inked periosteum.

“I don’t do it. Tattoo faces. I won’t ruin someone’s life like that.” Finality.

“But I’m okay with it. I want it. I’ve thought about it.”

Mark had laughed, the sound a short bark of knowledgeable doubt and disbelief.

Jakob remembered bristling at the sound, the implication of the sound. “I have.”

“You couldn’t possibly make the right decision about this because it’s not an informed decision. It’s the type of thing that you don’t regret until you’ve done it. I won’t do it.”

Jakob had balked at the sheer resistance. “You’ve never done it then?”

“I didn’t say that.”

The silence had stung more than the needles on his arm. “You going to elaborate?”

“I’ve tattooed guys on the head, under the chin, inside the ears, the inside of lips.”

“But no faces?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Dude.”

“If someone has their face tattooed already, okay, then yeah, I guess I don’t care. The responsibility of it is on them at that point.” He had turned and re-inked the needles. “Teardrops, Maori-style beards, maybe stars around the temple for certain types of broads.”

Jakob had held the older man’s gaze as though he was issuing a challenge and later, when he twisted Mark’s words into the solution, he realized it had been a challenge.

The trickery of the idea was pure brilliance. It was Halloween and that year it fell on a weekend evening and the festivities were more commonplace than if the holiday had fallen mid-week. He showed up early at the studio, a time he knew was kept to appointments if there were any as the walk-ins were few before noon. He had two different sized sharpies in his pocket. And with a jovial demeanor and an open expression he had guiled Mark into using the markers on his face, and the impermanent skull was inked. It took less than half an hour, would wash in a week’s time. The sketched disguise of it finished the skeleton so utterly, so completely that Mark had him stand still and ape for a few quick snapshots. The tattoo artist, oblivious to the well-laid plan, begrudgingly, had admitted that the affect was insane and cool and complemented the tattooed work.

Jakob, paled by boldness beneath the mask, had left in a casual thankful manner, but the moment he was out of sight fled to find a friend of a friend with a mail-order tattoo machine.

Three weeks later, the marker ink washed clean, the rudimentary lines of one side of his skull's smile lightly and amateurishly inked in he had returned brazen to the studio. Mark had looked at him with the hooded gaze of a snake outwitted by the mouse. Then he set to work. The pain of the sobered tattoo artist's professional hand upon his face had Jakob sucking air between marathon rounds.

 


	26. Chapter 26

Time had become a spinning orb with a still point at its center. Hours spent inside the studio would slow to a near stop while the thin edge of the world outside her loft hummed past with whirring speed.

Suddenly Carly was standing in her workspace, arms folded elegantly, watching them perform, perfect one another’s art. Evangeline was oblivious until Jakob startled, and she looked over surprised by the hour, seeing Carly in shadows cast from the summer evening light outside the windows.

“What time is it?” she asked her.

Carly smiled. “Half past cocktail hour, girlfriend.”

“You know where the blender is.”

Carly’s smile grew toothier and she disappeared around the wall, into the kitchen. Evangeline turned back to her model. He had pulled his t-shirt back over his head. In black block letters it simply stated -  _Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy._ She stepped back behind the big camera and clicked off another shot, he looked up at her, slightly perturbed.

“What? It’s cool. You don’t have to run off, Jakob. Stay and have a drink with us.”

She watched him process the invitation. She began putting away her equipment, switching off lights inside of soft boxes and umbrellas, and rearranging the studio floor space. She set the camera hanging around her neck down on the countertop and unhooked the film back from the Hasselblad and slid a protective body cover into place. She worked slowly and methodically and believed she could feel him respond to her deliberate pace and routine. She believed she could hear him breathe. Without looking she heard him lower himself into one of the overstuffed chairs at the far edge of the room and she smiled to herself.

Carly came around the corner expertly juggling three drinks and Evangeline moved towards her quickly. They met in front of the chair Jakob was lounged in, sneakered feet crossed at the ankles. Carly handed the glasses around.

“Want to move into the living area?” Evangeline asked, sipping at her drink, watching the two of them.

“Not especially. I’ve been sitting all day. Standing is nice and these windows are letting in just the right amount of heat.”

Jakob had accepted the drink from her, quickly swallowing half of it. “This is good.”

“Thanks. I should be a bartender, huh?”

“They get good tips I think.”

“They have to clean up a lot of puke, too. And who wants a drunk crying on them at the end of every shift. Nah. I’ll just keep temping. It suits me more.”

He nodded and finished his drink.

“Slow down, boyfriend. Want another?”

He sat forward, forearms on his knees, and Evangeline watched him watch Carly, gauging her, weighing her on his own scale of experience. “I gotta catch a bus.”

“What? You’re not going out with us?” Carly pouted and looked over at her. “Ask him to party with us.”

“You ask him. He’s sitting right there.”

 

 

Drunk to the point of nausea and the adrenalin of unease was twisting sickly inside her stomach. The evening had been a terrible idea, filled and fraught with tension and a little bit of fear. She was overcompensating by downing alcohol like water. Swimming in the thick inebriation, waiting for the inevitable sinking under. And she wanted to be pulled under, tossed into darkness, the experience far bigger than her ability to control it. The night had proven her a fool. Walking through the world with Jakob was nothing like being ensconced in her studio with him, or surrounded by hipsters at the Gallery with him. It was a frightening speed trial, at times circus, at times a threatening horror show from which there was no escape. Ugly silences greeted his appearance, bristling disgust, cackling laughter, and then the challenging intrusion. Carly seemed more capable of dealing with it than she was and had finally steered them towards a familiar dive where they were now seated at a small table in the far corner. They were hiding in the shadows they were cast in.

Evangeline was trying to focus her vision, watching Carly up at the bar, talking with the bartender and two regulars. The table top was wet and messy with beer bottles and shot glasses. Jakob looked aggressively miserable, his shoulder to the room, facing her.

“Think she’s coming back with the drinks or what?”

She looked over at him. He caught her gaze and held it, narrowing his own, drawing her in. “I don’t know. She looks kinda busy, huh?”

He glanced over then back, nodding. “Kinda, yeah.”

“Jakob?” Evangeline leaned forward on the table, towards him, but her elbow missed the edge and she slumped sideways, nearly off the chair.

“Careful.”

“I think I’m drunk.”

“You think?”

She laughed, and her stomach heaved slightly, she covered her mouth with her knuckles, nodding and watching him. “Hey, you want me to tell you something crazy?”

“I don’t know. What is it? Why?”

“It’s gossip, that’s what it is and that’s why, too.”

“Gossip? About who? I don’t give a crap about anyone famous.”

“No. It’s about,” she looked over at Carly again and giggled, “about Carly and,” she leaned forward this time setting her elbow firmly on the table, holding her chin up with her hand. She widened her eyes. “And Jack.”

He frowned and reached out to catch a bottle as she knocked it nearly off the table. “Jack? Who’s Jack?”

“Jack. You know. At the tattoo studio Jack. Yeah.” She was nodding and he leaned in closer, his eyes brighter than before and she smiled, reaching out for him. He allowed this and she grabbed at his upper arm. “Carly and her friend, you don’t know her, they blew Jack in the bathroom here. Like tag-teamed him.”

Jakob’s expression closed. She scooted her chair around the table, edging close up against him, and let her hand drop from his arm to his thigh, her fingers curling towards his inseam. “What do you think?”

“Of Carly giving Jack head in a threeway in the men’s room?”

She laughed again. Everything seemed sharp and brittle and each time she laughed she felt another layer breaking away between her and where she perceived him to be. “Yeah, what do you think of that? It was before Emma. She said.”

“Who said?”

“Carly said.”

“How’d you get so wasted?”

She pressed her hand open-palmed into the meat of his thigh and dragged it down to his knee and then pulled it halfway back up. She leaned heavily into him and his arm came up around her shoulder. She felt him pull her towards him, moving his shoulder out of the way and she relaxed, boneless against his chest as he adjusted his weight in the chair, settling her against him.

“Hmmmm?” he murmured into her ear. “Didn’t think you’d be such a silly drunk.”

“I’m not,” she protested. She wanted him to kiss her, wanted him to hold her and kiss her senseless. She nuzzled her mouth against his collarbone.

He laughed. “If you say so.”

She closed her eyes and her mind slipped messily sideways. She turned her body towards his, pressing her face into his neck, opening her lips and curling her tongue deeply into the indentation at the base of his throat. She heard him intake his breath and her hands came up, searching for his face, her finger tips in his ears, her thumbs pressed under his jaw, coaxing his head backwards. She kept her eyes closed tightly. She licked a hot stripe up the ridges of his windpipe and under his chin then caught the rounded edge of his jaw between her teeth and ran her mouth down the jutting bone back to his ear. There was an appreciative noise in his throat and it sang out of the void inside her head.

 “Fucking freak show!”

Jakob’s hands came up to her shoulders and gently maneuvered her back under his arm. She opened her eyes and followed his attention to the two figures several tables over. Hunched and menacing, both were sneering ugly, staring hard.

“No one’s asking you to look,” Jakob’s voice was a dangerous sharp-edged thing.

“Can’t help it. Take it somewhere else. How about that?”

“That’s good advice.” He stood, and she watched the two men recoil slightly. He reached down for her hand and pulled her to her feet. She stared at the men, outraged but also frightened. Jakob pulled her around the table and she knocked into a chair, upending it loud as a shot in the room and he stopped, deliberately lifting it and sliding it underneath the table edge. Carly was walking toward them now, her face surprised, two bottles of beer and a well drink in her hands. “Let’s get out of here,” Jakob said loudly to her. He took both bottles and shoved them down into the back pockets of his jeans. He upended the drink and swallowed fast.

“What’s up? What’s wrong?” Carly asked him. He walked past her, still towing Evangeline behind him and Carly fell into step beside her.

“It’s not easy being you,” Evangeline said, stopping, her fingers tight inside his grip. He stopped in front of her, not turning around.

“You’re not me.”

“No, I know. I mean, it’s not easy for you to be you.”

“It’s easier for me to be me than for me to be someone else. Or for someone else to be me.”

“What?”

He turned then and shushed her with one finger on her lips and Carly materialized in her peripheral focus and suddenly Evangeline wanted to be home, in her bed, alone. She wanted to sink into a world of her own dreaming. Escape back to the recognizable fantastic.

She watched as Carly switched her gaze between her face and Jakob’s closed expression, narrowing her eyes.

“Our girl got herself pretty smashed,” Carly said finally, moving in closer and slinging her arm around Evangeline’s waist. Evangeline kissed her on the cheek.

“Yep. I think she’s done.” He said, stepping back, beside her.

“Party pooper. Let’s go then.”

They each had an arm around her, but she leaned towards Jakob. At the car, she pulled away from them and lowered herself to a squatting position, her back against the cold metal. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Well, don’t be sick on your new shoes, girlfriend. Can you wait until we get you home? Jakob, you’re going to have to drive us.”

Evangeline lowered her head to her bent knees and willed her stomach to calmness. She could hear them talking and the sound was as though through cotton.

 “I can’t drive,” he said, and the words were simple and direct.

“You don’t have your license on you?” Carly asked.

“No.” He paused, “I don’t know how to drive.”

There was a silence falling on her from above, soaking wet batting, threatening to cocoon her and suffocate her. She pulled herself back to her feet. “Jakob,” she began but he had moved out of her reach.

“You two call a lyft and I’m going to take off.”

“Take off?” Carly sounded confused.

“I’m going to walk. Thanks for the drinks.”

He was taking long backwards strides, away from her, into the dark recesses of the parking lot, disappearing into the night.

 

 

She had slept for most of the day. Finally rising and showering late in the afternoon, willing her thoughts away from the long evening the night before, preferring the tunnel vision and misty memories to remain shrouded in her slightly hungover haze. She worked for several maniacal hours on a wedding album until darkness fell. The only light in the studio was the computer monitor and her eyes begged for a reprieve.

She had begun wandering, from studio to kitchen, through the living space, into the bedroom and back to the streetlight-lit kitchen. Restlessness an uneasy disease, itching beneath her skin, a frustrating low-grade fever, an unrecognizable deprivation gnawing at her. She realized the aching in her body was really an absence, emptiness, a hunger. She decided, finally, standing in front of the open refrigerator, to eat and began preparations for an omelet.

A knocking on the front door stilled her preparations.

On tiptoe, she looked through the peephole. Her heart thumped hard and heavy at the sight of him. He had backed up to the edge of the stoop, his face hidden beneath the hood of the sweat jacket, his head turned as though looking far down the road, into the pitched black night. She let out a held breath before opening the door.

“I was just getting ready to eat. You hungry?”

He stood silent, then reached up and pushed the hood off his head, it settled around his neck, a knight-errant’s chain-mailed cowl. He bent towards her then stepped up and into the house. She moved aside and shut the door behind him. He followed her into the kitchen.

They squared off, the offering of the night before becoming a provoking memory shared. She had issued the challenge, the dare. And they were both circling it.

“So-“she began, wanting to hold his attention and divert it at the same time. She hesitated on the verge of asking, hadn’t wondered about the answer before. She leant one hip against the counter, three eggs in a bowl, the carton open, she set the egg in her hand back into its place, tapping her fingernails along the line of white domed shells.

He looked over at her, his expression slightly closed. She was growing used to every conversation with him beginning behind an initial shield, a protective barrier he put between himself and the world. He inclined his head slightly. His habitual preservation did not offend her, it called her to him.

“Talk to me about the tattoo.”

His eyes narrowed and he nodded, turning his attention to the sink, filling his cupped palms with dish soap, lathering under the steaming running water. He turned off the faucet and dried his hands absently on a dish towel and then dropping it on the cement counter top. “Okay,” he said softly. His hands palm up. “What do you want to know?” He was watching her intently. “Yeah, it hurt.” A hint of a smile in the corners of his lips.

“Is that the question you get most? Did it hurt?”

“Usually. People don’t want to ask the, you know, big question. Makes them feel like posers, I suppose.”

“Posers?”

“Like they aren’t as hard as me. Or as cool as I must be. I don’t know.”

“No, I think I get that. You scare the people who would just blurt out something and you intimidate the people who want to ask but don’t want you to dismiss them.”

He nodded, curling his lips in between his teeth and humming a low assent.

Her heart fluttered.

He added, “I think that’s it exactly. But go on, ask.”

She considered, finding the permission between them. “Why, Jakob? Why?”

“Why not?”

She smiled. “That’s a stock answer.”

He laughed and the sound was gentle and soft. It magnetized her. She took a step towards him.

He spoke again. “You see me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see me.” He waved a hand down the length of his body.

“I feel like I could look at you forever. Is that seeing you?” She was pulled another step towards him. “You’re not answering the question.”

“This is what’s left in the natural order. After the last breath but before the dust to dust, ashes to ashes bit. The ultimate in between. This is as close to me as anything I could imagine. It makes sense in my mind.”

“You don’t want to be in the flesh? You don’t want to be in the here and now?”

“I think,” he paused. “I think that was true. For a long time.”

“And now?”

“Come here.” He reached out with both hands and pulled her into his arms.

 

 

It began with a second kiss.

It would have made more sense, a kind of sense that could be justified, or used to explain the complete abandon, if they had been drunk, hearkening back to the first kiss emboldened by inebriation. Remembering the second time she had put her hands on him. Alcohol emboldened. This time they were sober. But within moments of their lips touching, hands palm to palm, the push of one body against another, they began to get intoxicated. They had been brewing the potent palliative for weeks, the fruit of their labors rendering them stoned and rapturous and knowledgeable.

He pressed her against the refrigerator, bending his knees and letting the weight of his body hold her fast. It wasn’t enough; he wanted to crawl inside her, through her gasping mouth, down her throat, into the very flesh she wore. He groaned in frustration and would have dragged her down to the floor if she hadn’t grabbed for his hand and led him into the dark of her bedroom.

The distilled decoction of sweat and lust, the influence of moans and pleas, the crazy altering smoke from the electric current sparking between them. The endless spinning, the room filled with safe shadows, corners obliterated, everything rounded and smooth and beckoning with curves and bends unexplored. The tunnel vision, the blinking focus.

She was beginning to open to him, all want and need. He could feel it in the way her skeleton was revealing itself to him. Jutting hipbones, the bending shoulder, her breastbone. It was making him delirious.

“Oh god....” His voice guttered, a candle flame in the waxy thickness of his throat. He was groaning and suddenly and with no fair warning, he realized he was going to begin begging. Pleading for more. More of everything, for all of it; her finger-splayed hands pressing blue bruises into his heated flesh, the sharp bend of her knee fast into the hinging of his own knee, the feminine arms wrapping him tight. He wanted to be held.

He was being guided, urged and he was mewling. “Please, please.”

He had closed his eyes and her lips dragged across his eyelids.

A whisper. “Open your eyes.”

And he did. His eyes were egg teeth, the world new, he wet and being born. He was overwhelmed and he could not speak. But he could beg. “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,” he whispered and then he was being kissed. Fiercely, possessively, completely, totally, falling into this other mouth, eyes sliding closed again.

“Let me,” he demanded, teeth clamped around skin, words licking at her flesh.

“Yes. Now. Harder.”

“Jesus, God!” His blasphemy bled from his mouth and he dragged quick knuckles across his lips and looked down but nothing more than saliva glistened on the back of his hand.

He was drooling, rabid, from being kissed senseless. His lips sucked swollen, his teeth ached in their sockets and he pressed his open mouth against her flesh again, to teethe the pain away. There was a muscle, a thick slab of it, running from behind his knee up to a triangulation inside his thigh. She put her mouth there, tonguing into the tendoned groove, running it slavering over this and it undid him. His voice gave away his last hiding place, crying surrender.

They warred for dominance. Taking turns, overflowing the hours.

“Are you?”

“How close..."

"...now now..."

"Are you going to....”

Grasping hands and biting teeth signaled release and the field leveled and they began again.

“Come here,” he whispered to her, calling her to him. And after all the flesh on flesh, the teeth on teeth, hips slamming home and hips like cradles, after all that, she stilled and crawled into his arms, wrapping her own tightly around him. He swung wide over the side of the bed, fished on the floor, found the bedspread, and yanked it free of their shed clothing. He one-handed shook it out over the single form of their two bodies. It drifted down and he tucked it in where he could reach; a cocoon into which they burrowed themselves waiting for the metamorphosis that surely had to follow such complete dissolution. They held one another, exhausted, elated, and he pulled hard and felt her follow him down into sleep.

 

 

She woke from a dreamless sleep, a calm rising upwards through black water to blue to green and then breaking the surface, the colors coalescing warm around her. Slowly she opened her eyes to the new day. He was curled fetally on the far side of the bed. Fisted hands beneath his chin, knees bent, shoulders drawn inward. She had seen this posture when he was recuperating on the sofa but now she saw him through a different lens.

The dream had become reality. She looked at him. The unreal real. Eyes closed, breathing deeply, the skeleton slept. On the side of his neck, just above the upward slope of his shoulder a red bruise bloomed, the shape of her lips on his skin.

And suddenly her stomach knotted and turned over. A thin sheen of cold sweat broke out across her chest, her arms, her thighs and she staggered out of the bed, heading for the bathroom. She was going to be ill, a roiling metallic feeling inside of her. In the bathroom, she fell to her knees on the floor, cradling her head in her hands, rocking slightly. A sickening panic was moving through her and she swallowed hard.

She heard him get up and then he was there, moving into the bathroom, squatting down in front of her. She saw him through her laced fingers.

“What is it? Are you sick?” His hands unsure.

She couldn’t bear to look at him. He reached out for her and she recoiled from the touch, moving away from him, sliding across the floor awkwardly until her back was pressed against the wall, her knees up against her chest. She breathed in deeply, then raised her head and looked across at him.

“Are you a drug addict?”

“Good morning to you, too.”

Her gaze was fearful. “Just tell me, please.” She hugged her legs tighter to her body, curling around her knees. She felt as though her head was filled with buzzing insects.

“Oh, I get it.” He stood. “Didn’t see that coming.” His gaze hardened and narrowed and she watched him process the question, stifle his emotions. Then he rolled his eyes slightly and nodded. “You’re asking me that now?”

She began to cry messily, nodding.

Time slowed, seconds ticking past, the air heavy and thick between them. She refused to think over the long hours they had spent in her bed, instead looking at him in the naked light of the morning, seeing him as he was and her stomach clenched again.

She knew him now, the shape of his body, the marrowed skeleton beneath the inked bones, the long ligaments, the cautious masculinity, the muscles sliding just below the surface of his skin. He was still the tattooed skeleton that had mesmerized her with his shocking and stark surface self, but now there was so much more to him, between them. The carnal flesh, the body, his vessel. He had offered this to her and she had drank and drank and drank.

They had narrowed the gaping distance between them to the thickness of two skinned creatures.

“Jakob,” she said around gulping breaths and he must have heard the plea in her voice.

He hunkered back down in front of her and this time he reached out and firmly put his hands on her shoulders, sliding his warm palms down to her upper arms. “We were safe, careful. You know that.”

She nodded.  “Is it weird that I trust you? I don’t even know you. But I trust you. Still-”

“Believe me, you know me. You know me better than most. Now.” He sat back on his heels, hands between his knees. “Is this regret?”

“No.” She paused, reaching blindly for something. He stood and grabbed several tissues and handed them to her. She nodded her thanks. “We should talk,” she said quietly.

“Then I’m going to put my pants on.”

She climbed to her feet and splashed cold water on her face, rubbing a wet hand across the back of her neck. She avoided her reflection in the mirror above the sink. She grabbed a vintage silk smoking jacket off a hook behind the door and returned to the bedroom.

She stopped, looking at the crazy mess of bed sheets and discarded clothing. He was hiking his jeans up, buttoning the fly. Kicking around, looking for his t-shirt. He grabbed it, shook it out and pulled it on over his head. It cheerfully announced -  _I’m a Ray of Fucking Sunshine_. She walked to the edge of the bed and began trying to make it. He stood on the far side, reaching down for various bed clothes and tossing them onto the mattress. She straightened the pillows and caught his eye. He smiled cockily at her and she answered with a scarlet blush.

“Leave it,” she said and walked out into the front room. He stayed behind and she busied herself brewing the coffee. She filled the two cat bowls with kibble and wandered to the wall of windows.

She tried to look out across the train tracks but could only focus on a cracked but still functional pane, broken decades before, the glass spider web catching and bending the morning light.She curled her body into a corner of one of the sofas, the hot cup of coffee between her palms. He was seated beside her, not touching, his feet on the coffee table, balancing his coffee mug on his thigh.

“I’m not sick,” he said quietly.

She looked at him.

“I don’t have any diseases.”

“How do you know? And how do you know that I don’t have something?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“And the drugs?”

“I do drugs, Evangeline. I drink until I puke and pass out or pass out and puke. I’m not denying that. But I’m not a junkie. I’m not hooked on the needle or the pipe.”

“What about,” she hesitated, “Tami?”

He scowled. “What about her? You’re the jealous type, huh?”

“Maybe.”

“What about Mark?” He looked away from her and drank deeply.

“Are you asking about STDs or relationships?”

“I’m not asking about anything.”

She took a deep breath, leaned forward and set the coffee cup down on the table. “Mark and I aren’t seeing each other. Anymore. I’m sorry that this conversation is gross but I think we should talk about it.”

“Talk about diseases or about relationships? Kinda late on both counts, isn’t it?” He shrugged.

“We could get tested.”

He stood, set the coffee down on the table and stretched, his fingers laced, hands high over his head. He brought his palms back down to the back of his neck, and popped his neck vertebrae in one direction, then the other. The deliberation of each movement a message. “I’m out of here.”

“Jakob, please.” She unfolded her legs and stood.

“You run hot and cold.” He looked over at her. “Sending me mixed signals from the beginning. And then last night. Listen, you don’t want to hang out, that’s cool. But I don’t have a time machine and we can’t go backwards. Sorry. I’m telling you that I don’t have any diseases. You don’t want to believe that, sorry. As far as Tami, okay, you sleep with someone,” his gaze shifted away, “have sex with someone enough times, after a while there’s some sort of thing between you. I don’t know what you call that. She’s not my girlfriend, but yeah, I live with her and her brother. And she never once asked me about HIV or herpes or who else I was seeing.”

“This isn’t about that. About her.” Evangeline heard the high pitch rise in her voice and swallowed hard. The conversation was no longer in her control. She had begun it but he had taken it over, finalizing it, finishing it. He was moving through the living space, gathering his things, kicking his sneakers over to a spot in front of a sofa. He sat and pulled them on, a complicated maneuver with tying them that stilled her. She watched him work the bow of the lacing and realized that it was like watching a child learning to tie his shoes, his tongue deep in his cheek. Something in his tattooed fingers, the way he held the crossed lace with the side of his thumb, the ridiculous sneakers, pierced her heart.

“Don’t go. Please.”  
  
He nodded, finished the tying. The night had compressed behind them like a spring. He stood and she pulled hard at the cuff of his sleeve and he looked down at her, his gaze sad and slightly panicked.

“Don’t,” he said simply and she relinquished her hold.

“I want you to stay.”

“Do you? It sure doesn’t feel like that to me.” Without warning he leaned in towards her, his free hand coming up to the back of her head, pulling her face closer. He kissed her hard, his mouth insistent, his grip fast and furiously strong. Then he was gone.

She stood, splintering, and watched as he pulled the front door closed behind him.


	27. Chapter 27

He had been walking for nearly an hour. He loved to walk. The cement sidewalks were unforgiving. The roadways smelled of tar and crushed stone. He reveled in the unstoppable life force of city-planted trees, alleyways and houses with endless untold stories, buildings and fire escapes harboring activity. He had intimate knowledge of the man-made hike. The act of walking, the city trek. It cleared his mind, until his thoughts disappeared completely, he was in his body, the flesh and bone machine working effortlessly, he could let his brain quiet itself, and time could be passed in the meditation of moving.

He had left her in a slow rush of frustration and pain. Wanted to empty his mind as though pouring out a bucket of filth, wanted to wash his thoughts clean of longing and desire. Wanted to be rid of the responsibility of himself and now of her. He had been overcome by a need to be alone.

So, he walked. Down alleys and up streets, across parking lots, and behind stores. He cut over a busy thoroughfare and through empty lots. He circumnavigated his way back to his house.

He knew before he stepped through the broken front gate that he didn’t want to be there. Quietly he opened the door, the front room was empty and reeked of every imaginable human vice. He breathed it in deeply, wondered if it would act as chloroform, numb him, render him unconscious until he woke again to the familiar life he no longer wanted to be living. Slowly he stepped into the dark hallway, listening to the energized silence of a house with sleeping occupants. He pushed open the door to the room he inhabited. Someone had slid back the window and taken down the sheet that acted as curtain. He looked closer, someone had rifled his stash. He lowered himself to the edge of the broken, sagging mattress, sitting stiffly. He let his weary gaze travel the room, remembering each item, taking stock, inventory of the small gatherings that constituted his belongings. The detritus of the life he had trashed. He could count the wasted time in years now, looking around at the resultant end.

He was worn out. The past weeks had culminated in a wild ride of emotional and physical intimacy which had drained him nearly dry. With a stiff and agonizing slowness, he lay down on the dirty bed, closed his eyes and slept the sleep of an injured animal.


	28. Chapter 28

Evangeline rolled over again and checked the clock on the bedside table. Just past four in the morning. She flung her arm over her eyes and choked back a small sob. She had lain awake for hours. Dawn and the new day were a torment. With a violent toss she threw the bedclothes off and lay exposed, nude, her body heated through with thoughts of Jakob. She could not hold back a moan of despair. Her heart answered, lovesick, lovesick, lovesick pounding through her veins.

How aptly named, the malady, she thought with rolled eyes and an ironic smile. She had forgotten the intensity of such malingering of the heart. If she had ever actually known it. At least to the degree from which she was now suffering. She was sick from longing for the man, feverish with his absence.

She tried to remember a time past when she was so overcome. Not with Mark. Ever. But he had made himself so available. She remembered clearly consuming him, being consumed by the tattooed flesh, the male shape of him, the strength but she could not remember an unanswered longing twisting through her.

This was a physical crying out for Jakob. She felt as though she were suffocating, frozen with the strangest of pain. It emanated from her lungs but was hurting inside her head. These are not exaggerations, she thought calmly. These are realizations.

She realized that she was in love with the man beneath the skeleton.

A life separate from her life, lived as fellow travelers on Earth but kept apart by circumstance and happenstance and chance. She swallowed hard, her fists balled angrily against her closed and trembling eyelids.

Her world had narrowed, seemingly without her realizing it; the world had narrowed to him and her. Her wide world filled with work and photography and sitting peacefully in thought was gone, now it was just him and his relation to her and how all things she observed or felt referenced back to him. The desire to share everything she experienced with him was so sharp a need that without that fulfillment of purpose her body felt halved, less than whole, without, bereft. She was being torn into smaller and smaller pieces.

And to not be fulfilled by him, completed, healed was to be plunged into despair, to have her newly narrowed world become a claustrophobic enclosure from which she could not escape, could not see her way out of.  She yearned for sleep, for the deadening of all the senses that were running right under the surface of her skin. She desired drunkenness, a forgetting, a dulling, and a quieting.

She ached and tossed and turned in her bed. She got up, pulled a long sleep shirt over her head, unbound her thick braid of hair and went out into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

She stood, in front of the sink, on one foot, sipping her coffee and pondering desire, love, hate, longing, fear and death. How was it that there could be two individuals and then suddenly between them a third entity, a separate experience shared by just them, created not by will but by fate?  And why did she feel so certain that somewhere he was experiencing the same thing?

In that moment, he knocked on the front door.


End file.
